The Craft: The Book of The Movie
by BlackOrchid
Summary: Yes, I'm trying to finish this...the world's first & only novelization of The Craft!
1. The Craft Pt1: The End Of The Beginning

Craft1 The Craft:   
The Book Of The Movie 

I wanted to try my hand at movie adaptations, and since they never put out a paperback for The Craft, I thought...   
Also, I added a bunch of scenes, plus the cut scenes that are found on the special edition dvd. I always like book versions of movies because they fill in a lot of things that happened between the action, and also what the characters are thinking. Anyway, I hope you like it. I'll be adding chapters and hope to finish in a month or two.

Also: These characters, the story, music lyrics, etc. is the property of the movie studio. I make no money off of this. This is just a writing exercise.   


Chapter 1: The End of The Beginning 

Nancy quickly tossed her candles, herbs, and athame into her knapsack and made a b-line door of her trailer. 

Don't let her be awake don't let her be awake... 

She had bargained on her mom being cold out in dreamland after the amount of liquor she put away that night, dead to the world like her stepdad who was passed out on the couch, big hairy belly sticking out of a dirty undershirt that used to be white in some former life. 

But the uneven, frantic footsteps of Grace Downs caught up with her, Nancy could hear the shrill voice, 

"Nancy! Nancy what are you doing this late at night?! You can't do that!" 

It was way past her "curfew", it was true, though the idea that slurry drunks like her mom and stepdad could formulate something so domestic as a curfew was certainly a laugh. They could hardly pay their utility bills. 

The night was dark, dark blue, almost black, and the air was crisp, wild, foreboding. 

Excellent, Nancy thought as she ran out and let the slamming door crush the tip of the cigarette dangling out of her mother's mouth.. Perfect night for a ritual. 

The muted voice could still be heard from within the trailer as Nancy stalked away, 

"You can't do that!" 

*** *** *** 

Bonnie and Rochelle were already starting to unpack their equipment upon the grass when Nancy arrived. They would use the verandah in Rochelle's yard. No worry about 'Chelle's parents putting up a fuss, her mom was out of town on business and her dad put night shifts in the hospital. They had this space all to themselves, and would take full advantage of it. They could chant as loud as they wanted. And since what they wanted was to call Manon, to make him finally listen to them, loudness would be necessary. 

"Hey, Nancy," Rochelle greeted in her calm, unflappable manner. 

"H-hi," Bonnie whispered through her lank, stringy dark hair. 

"Merry meet, girls," Nancy said as she pulled a bundle of sage out of her backpack. "Lets just get right to it..." 

Without any further ado, the girls began to set the patio table on the verandah up as an altar, carefully positioning crystals, bottles of essence, candles, and incense in a manner pleasing to their god. They hoped. 

Nancy had a lot riding on this ritual tonight. Their little witchcraft circle had been attempting to invoke Manon at every full moon for the last three months. At first it was fun: the mystery, the anticipation. But their wishes had remained unfulfilled. Bonnie still had her scars. Rochelle was still being picked on by Laura Lizzie and her band of bleach-blond racist barbie-dolls. And Nancy was still poor, still hated, still bearing the reputation as the girl Chris Hooker laid and dumped. 

If something didn't happen soon, Nancy knew that the circle would dissolve, and with it any personal power she held over the girls by virtue of her Craft knowledge. Rochelle was on the verge of leaving, she could tell--the way the girl made that tired, impatient sigh towards the end of their chanting, as if she had better things to do. Bonnie would then follow after Rochelle, because the two of them had been friends before they met Nancy. They would both leave, leave Nancy all alone... 

No! Something had to happen tonight, something had to! Nancy resolved to will something to happen, anything, to save this circle. 

Because without the circle, without the power of three chanting as one, Nancy knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell in achieving what she really wanted: power. 

(Bonnie had mentioned something about how they really needed a Fourth to make proper magic, that there were four elements and four directions and there needed to be four to a circle--but that was a lot of crap as far as Nancy was concerned. Rochelle and Bonnie, she could handle. But a Fourth, that was a wild card, that could be anybody, it could be someone who would want to challenge Nancy, even oust leadership of the circle...no. It was safer with three.) 

They began to chant, three pairs of lips moving as one, eyes downcast in concentration: 

"Now is the time,   
Now is the hour   
Ours is the magic,   
Ours is the power" 

The delicate tinkle of windchimes could be heard in the air. It definitely seemed a bit colder, a bit windier, but the girls didn't stop to contemplate it, to drum up the hope too soon and gawk and coo over Manon as if he was Tom Cruise. They continued to chant: 

"Now is the time,   
Now is the hour   
Ours is the magic,   
Ours is the power" 

A pulse could be felt through the yard, through the palms of each girl, resting on the beads of sweat accumulating on their skin despite the chill... 

Nancy slowly began to look up, look up and straight in front of her, in a trance, her voice rising above those of the other two: 

"Now is the time,   
Now is the hour...   
Ours is the magic--   
OURS IS THE *POWER*" 

Just at that moment it felt like centuries of witchcraft compressed into less than 30 seconds and flashed before Nancy's eyes: occult symbols, ancient etchings of sorcerers, lightening quick glances into secret books of magic...and then there was just sky...sky... 

*** *** *** 

Sarah sat back in her airplane seat in dread, looking off into space. 

It was all too much: dad's new wife, the move to L.A.... 

And oh, let's not forget, the suicide attempt she made last year. 

And---hello!----the death of her mom. 

This self-pity only made Sarah more depressed. She knew she had everything in the world to be thankful for. Her dad loved her, and his wife adored her. Part of the reason Dad decided to make the move was the hope a new environment would clear his daughter's mind of bad memories and give her a fresh start. When she had returned to her old school after the "incident" and about a month of in-patient and out-patient intensive therapy, everyone considered her the "suicide girl". But she had felt singled out, different, even before this all happened. Maybe that's what happens when you grow up without your mom. When your mom dies while giving birth to you--- 

"God, Sarah, you're so *pathetic*", a little voice inside her said. 

Funny. That little voice. It didn't quite sound like her own. 

*** *** *** 

It was raining buckets by the time they touched ground at LAX, sheets of water. Great. 

Sarah's father sensed her discomfort. 

"It'll be a lot drier once we get in the house, honey..." 

The taxi ride down the winding roads to the new house was kind of neat, though. So many plants, so much green. It was like a little rainforest. Sarah could have sworn she caught a peek at a large snake crawling on a tree trunk, but she was sure it was just her imagination. They were in Los Angeles, after all, not the Amazon. 

They closed their umbrellas and entered the sprawling Spanish-style house; maybe they should have kept them open. Water dripped from the high golden roofs and delicately accumulated on the floor below. 

"Yeah, it's a lot drier in here Dad..." Sarah moaned. 

"Oh, God...we need a new roof." Jenny, Dad's wife, added. 

But Mr. Bailey always tried to look at the bright side of things. 

"Yeah...but it's big," he said, and added dramatically with a goofy smile, "It's BIG!" 

As the couple began discussing the imminent home improvements that would have to be performed, Sarah drifted away to explore her new room and unpack. It was hard for her to fight the feelings of emptiness. Empty room, and empty heart. A fragment of a lyric by the band Our Lady Peace played in her head, 

"...this is the end of the beginning...of the beginning...of the beginning..." 

Well, once the furniture is moved into place and the pictures are hung on the wall it won't be so bad, Sarah thought, walking to a small cardboard box and opening it. The first thing resting inside of it was a black-and-white photograph in an ornately carved wooden frame. It was of a woman in a pretty sundress holding a straw hat, standing in the middle of lush trees; she was beautiful and serene. Sarah reverentially stood it up on the table. Mom. 

Finding the photo buoyed Sarah's spirits. She would unpack and decorate her room. She would enjoy living in this new house. She would go to school and make lots of new friends. She would start a whole new chapter of her life. 

She bounded down the stairs to grab some of her larger framed pictures. The deep gold of the walls, the clay pots lying here and there...there was something spiritual about it, like an old Mexican church, so different from her typical suburban prefab house back in San Francisco. So many things were different here. 

As Sarah knelt to peer into one of the wrapped picture frames, the sound of the door swinging open suddenly filled her ears. She turned around and gasped, hardly able to articulate a sound. 

Standing in the doorway was a disheveled man with a scraggly beard and dirty, damp clothes. He looked hungry, crazy--and in his hands was a snake! 

"Found this out back, you want it?" he asked, offering the serpent to her. 

Sarah twirled around and leaned back against the picture frames in horror. 

"Wha...no!!!" 

"Relax, what's the manner with you...RELAX!" The scary man barked back at her. 

Sarah screamed, 

"Dad!!!" 

Her father ran down the steps and regarded the man with alarm and anger, 

"Hey...Hey!!" 

Mr. Bailey grabbed a poker from the fireplace. 

"Get the hell out of here!" He yelled, chasing the bum out the door with the poker. Then he turned to his daughter in concern. 

"Sarah, you okay?" 

"Y-yeah, I'm fine...he just surprised me, t-that's all," she answered, trying to catch her breath. 

"You sure?" he asked, trying to stop his heart from beating out of control as well. 

"Yeah, I'm fine..." 

But as soon as the words left her lips, a new terror slowly came into her view. The snake. It was resting on her father's foot and about to crawl up his leg. 

"D-dad?" 

He looked down and instinctively hurled his poker at the creature. Sarah couldn't watch. 


	2. The Craft Pt2: They Don't Know About Me

Craft2 The Craft:   
The Book Of The Movie   


Chapter 2: They Don't Know About Me   


Four girls woke up and prepared to get to class at St. Benedict's that day. 

One rose well before the sun came up, giving her enough time to do some aerobics and treadmill before leaving for school. She had to keep in top physical condition in order to maintain her place on the swim team. Especially after the few training dates she had missed after that incident when she found racial slurs scrawled all over her gym locker in red lipstick. Rochelle knew it was Laura Lizzie who did it--that evil Marsha Brady-lookalike plagued her from day one at St. Benedict. It was hard being virtually the only African-American in an all-white school. But she knew she couldn't quit pursuing her dreams just because some bitches were intent on making her life hell. If only this thing with Manon was true... She felt guilty doubting the existence of Manon, of using terms such as "if", but...what if they were all doing these spells for nothing? Then they really would be the freaks the rest of the school thought they were, three crackpot girls talking to an imaginary "friend"... Rochelle expertly applied the dark Berry lipstick to her mouth and made a promise to herself--if something didn't happen soon, anything, she would quit the circle. She buoyed her pride, those beautiful brown corkscrew curls, with her fingers, making them rest on her head just so. Then she frowned in thought. Yeah. Quit the circle. And then convince her parents to get her into a new school, because even Lousy Lizzie was nothing compared to the wrath of a particular hot-tempered witch with short jet-black hair she knew... 

Another girl lay in under her covers for almost a hour in dread before getting up. It wasn't so much school she was dreading, though that was no picnic for her either. It was taking off her clothes to take a shower. Taking a glimpse, no matter how hard she trained herself not to, of her deformed skin in the mirror. The sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach as her fingers glided over the rough bumpy scar tissue of her back. Bonnie wished she never had to take a shower a again, wished that she never had a reason to remove the layers of bulky clothing she draped herself in. But she didn't need to add poor hygiene to the reasons why the other kids shunned her. Bad enough being Burn-Victim Bonnie. She got out of bed, quickly took off her pajamas and underwear, ignored her mirrors, and jumped into the shower. She was done in ten minutes, and in less than five more she was covered up again. The curves of her well-endowed chest were still visible behind her bra and shirt and sweater and jacket; barely, but it was there. She could be pretty. She could be a knockout, she knew she could, if only Manon could hear...Bonnie knew Rochelle was getting impatient. But she still held out hope. And she was determined to stay. You know, for as long as 'Chelle did. She didn't know if she could handle being in the circle with Nancy alone. Besides, two was too small a number. In fact, so was three, as she pointed out to Nancy several times, before letting the subject drop, she had too little friends to begin with and didn't need to lose the few she had. 

Yet another girl grabbed her clock upon hearing its annoying beeping and threw it across the room. Nancy was irritable today, more than usual. Something felt wet under the sheets, uncomfortable, and she pulled them back to find a bloody mess. Damn, she didn't expect it this early! Didn't she just have it? She could keep the phases of the moon straight for Esbats but couldn't keep track of her own menstrual cycle...Dammit damn damn!!! Mommy Dearest was going to have a cow if these stains didn't come out, but she didn't have time to wash anything. Nancy always gave herself just enough time to hop out of bed and get out the door, reason being that she hated life in this trailer so much she wanted to limit her waking minutes in its surroundings. Only time she felt anything anywhere near the realm of "good" was when she played loud rock music and sat before her little makeshift altar. If it wasn't her lush mom harping at her, it was her lech stepdad pawing at her. It was like her only reason to be on this Earth was to suffer in degradation. Her mom, stepdad, Chris, the rest of the stinkin' school. If she could key into the power of Manon, things would certainly be different. If she could draw the power of Manon into herself, some people would definitely get lessons hurled their way, as well as lightening bolts. She thought back to the spell the girls cast a couple of days before. Would anything happen? Nancy lined her eye in heavy black, the bright blue of her iris in sharp contrast. Something better happen. Something better. Something better happen, it just better happen. Or else God help even Manon. 

The last girl, much like Bonnie, was reluctant to get out of bed, but for different reasons. It was her first day at her new school. She didn't have the school uniform yet, so it would be even more awkward. Sarah knew her dad was a sweetie and would let her stay home until she got the regulation skirt and blouse, but she just felt strongly that it had to start, it being her New Life. It indeed was the end of the beginning for her, and now she just had to throw herself into her new routine as soon as possible. Still, such a go-getter attitude didn't erase the fact that she felt like heck this morning. Part of it was the bad dreams she had. Nightmares about snakes, fire, strange women chanting in front of flames. It had gotten so bad that she woke up in the middle of the night and grabbed her mother's picture to her chest. She guessed this all had to be expected. Anxiety, being the "new kid". The bum with the snake didn't help either. She still remembered the garbage bag sitting out on the lawn, its lumpy contents being the dead serpent. She regretted the death of the animal. It couldn't help what it was. It wasn't evil...wasn't good, either. It just was. It looked pathetic lying there on the floor, mortally wounded. The scars on her wrists itched. A knock on her door. Dad came in, an apron tied around his waist, a tray of hearty eggs and toast in his hands. "Rise and shine, Sarah! Brand new day!" 

*** *** *** 

Dad's car pulled up in front of St. Benedict's. Sarah looked warily out onto the campus. 

"You could wait, you know...just until you got a school uniform--you don't *have* to go now..." 

"I can't stay home and watch daytime tv for the rest of my life..." Sarah answered, thinking back not to the last two days but to the period of time she spent at home after "the incident". 

"Why not? I could..." 

Sarah wished she could share her father's sense of humor, but the truth was she was scared to death and just wanted to leap out of the car before she lost nerve and asked her dad to drive her home. 

"I just want to get started and get it over with..." 

"Well, you look good, good luck...Jenny'll pick you up..." 

Sarah got out and closed the car door behind her. 

"I'll walk..." 

The words just flew out of her mouth, she hoped dad didn't think she was angry at Jenny. Might have been nice, a familiar face to greet her after a day in Heck. Why did she say that? 

"You sure?" 

No, I'm not sure, maybe-- 

"Yes." 

Ooohhkay, Sarah thought, I guess I am walking home alone through a strange neighborhood tonight. Greaaaat idea! Maybe run into her friend the homicidal snake-handling drifter. Or even weirder... 

Sarah hoped she didn't look too much like the scared neophyte walking through the St. Benedict campus, books clutched to her chest, eyes darting from side-to-side as she absorbed her surroundings--but she knew she did. Her street clothes stuck out like a sore thumb in the sea of dark blazers and vests. She would have given anything for a friend right now, or at least a friendly student willing to give her a tour, give her the rundown of the cliques and places to hang out, people to avoid. 

A big crucifix hanging on the side of a building caught her eye. She was never a big religious person, though it might have come handy during certain difficult periods of her life. Part of it was a fear, a stupid, silly fear, that God would not like her for some reason. For some reason--like maybe she could do things that God didn't approve of, things that some might say came from a different place. She didn't mean to do those things. She wasn't even sure if she really did them. Things like making a cup fly off a table. Visions. Premonitions. The closest thing Christianity had to address things like that were exorcists, but funny, she didn't feel exactly like Linda Blair. Still, it'd be nice to have some sort of spiritual center to her life, a reassurance that she wasn't on the Highway to Hell. Ha, she thought, good luck finding that at a parochial high-school. Hellooooo prayer meets and bingo... 

*** *** *** 

They had a name for the three girls. When the three girls passed by in the hall, it was like the parting of the Red Sea, students just got the heck out of their way and tried to avoid eye-contact. Nancy liked that just fine, let them be scared. She strode past them all with an air of defiance, her friends at either side of her. Bonnie's head was buried in her Witches Almanac, she pretended not to notice the stares but they never failed to hurt her. Rochelle, much like the other students they passed, avoided eye-contact and tried to look cool, but it came off a little sheepish. 

"All the good people...all the good people...they don't don't know about me...they don't know about me..." 

Three boys in particular reacted to the girls as they walked by, and with good reason--they were Chris Hooker and his two friends, Trey and Mitt. 

"Hey, scary bitch alert," Trey announced. 

"Oh! I thought it was Satan," Mitt said in mock horror. 

Chris, however, just poked around in his locker and just looked at them soundlessly as his two buddies began to pray to God for protection. 

The look Nancy shot back at them could have melted steel. 

They had a name for these three girls, and though it was used in jest and derision Chris held a conviction in his chest that it was probably true. The reoccurring crabs he suffered ever since he dumped Nancy attested to *that*. 

*** *** *** 

The girls went to their lockers. Bonnie lifted her head just a little out of her book, enough to address her friends. 

"The Almanac says today will bring the arrival of something," she said hopefully. 

"Yeah, wonderful," Nancy said, shoving her backpack into the locker, "I'm getting my RAG..." 

Bonnie continued, undaunted. 

"A new wholeness, and with it a new balance...earth, air, fire water, maybe it's our Fourth..." 

Not this crap again, Nancy thought, tugging the black noose she kept in her locker. 

"We don't NEED a Fourth..." 

"Nancy, we need someone to call the corners: north, south, east and west." 

Rochelle looked up from some class notes and said casually, 

"Four would make a circle..." 

Nancy, definitely irritated by the direction this little discussion was heading, motioned towards a burly female security guard and scrunched up her face in a wicked smile. 

"Maybe *she* can be our Fourth..." 

The girls giggled. 

"I *love* a woman in uniform," Nancy laughed, and the three went to class. 

*** *** *** 

Sarah's first class that morning was French. Good, she was in advanced French in her old school, at least she would know the subject and not be a total spaz. 

"Bonjour class!" the teacher said, finishing a sentence on the board. 

_Si vous aviez faites vos devoirs, vous comprandriez:_ Sarah knew instantly what that meant,_ if you did the homework, you'd understand_. Next, the teacher said he hoped everybody had a good weekend, and singled out one student, Mitt, who was joking around with his friends Trey and Chris. Sarah paused at Chris. Hmmm, he was kind of cute. 

"Monsieur Roger, votre weekend: c'est bien aussi?" 

Mitt's goofy face looked like someone was speaking Martian to him. 

"Uh...tres bien...mon-sewer..." 

The class laughed; Sarah felt uncomfortable at the way the boys mocked the teacher, cute guy among them or no. Geez, what jerks! 

"Que ce faite, votre weekend...vous allez a la plage, concert de rock...cherchez la femme?" 

Roger's face looked even more bewildered. Chris scribbled something on his notebook: did you go out with a girl? Immediately things began to register for Mitt. 

"Oh, you mean did I get *laid*?" 

"En francais, Monsieur Roger, en francais..." the teacher playfully reproached him. 

"Um, oui...beaucoup de...beaucoup de laid." 

This got even a bigger charge out of the class. Sarah couldn't hold herself any longer, and muttered "what a jerk" in French under her breath. The teacher's face brightened up at her remark, and his was not the only attention she garnered...Chris Hooker suddenly noticed the ravishing brunette as well. 

Mitt was less pleased. 

"What's that snail-trail saying about me?" 

The teacher simply smiled and pointed to the phrase on the board.   
Si vous aviez faites vos devoirs, vous comprandriez 

"Yeah, this is L.A., we should be learning Mexican, or something... 

Sarah shrunk from the attention, from the praise of her teacher and the scrutiny of the class. She didn't like to be singled out. She didn't like to feel different, probably because she understood just how different she was, how different...just block it out, ignore it. And the class soon went on to other butcherings of the French language. But as Sarah slowly twirled the point of her pencil onto her desk, another pair of eyes fell upon her. Bonnie had a intuitive sense just then to watch the girl, to keep her sight on her, and good thing she did--Sarah removed her hand from the pencil and made it somehow continue to twirl. Bonnie's pupils widened. This was the first real bit of "magic" see had seen since her and the others started the whole witch thing! This was it! This was the Fourth! 

The pencil lead slowly, quietly grounded into Sarah's desk. Her entire attention was focused on it. She might have gone on indefinitely but Bonnie let out a tiny gasp of air. 

The two girls met each other's gaze for a split second. The pencil fell over and rolled off the desk. 

Sarah pretended nothing happened, she looked away nervously and back to her book. But she was shaken. 

*** *** *** 

Bonnie made the whispery announcement to Nancy and Bonnie at Bio class. 

"She's here..." 

"She *who*?" Nancy asked, her face creasing in puzzlement. 

"Someone to be the Fourth, she's the one..." 

A small fear caught Nancy in the gut, but she expressed it in humor, placing her hand on Bonnie's forehead. 

"Are you *feeling* okay?" 

Meanwhile, Sarah asked the nun about the lab groups, and headed to the first group she found. The three girls seemed okay, the middle one looked a little wild, but she thought they'd be fine. She put on her friendliest face. 

"Hi, do you guys mind if I sit with you, because I have to find a lap group..." 

They just looked at her. Well, the middle girl did more than *look*, she sorta flashed an expression like "get lost, scram, go to hell". The response totally shocked Sarah, and she just blinked. 

"Okay..." 

Then she left. Bonnie looked after her in alarm. 

"No, y-you can sit here..." But her voice was so weak, so low and without authority, Sarah never heard her. 

Bonnie's heart dropped: she knew in her heart that this was the one, the Fourth, their only chance to really make Manon listen, and they blew it! Rochelle glared at Nancy as well. 

"Happy?" Bonnie breathed in a rare show of dissent. 

Ugh, Nancy hated this! What was the big deal? Surely that mousy girl wasn't a fourth of anything, c'mon! 

"What?" Nancy exclaimed innocently, but even she could not deny that for a few moments she felt it too, felt the four elements coming together. 

*** *** *** 

Now Sarah really wished that she would have let Jenny pick her up! She was beyond miserable. School back in San Francisco had its rough spots, but never had she encountered girls so mean as this, for no good reason at all. She hated this school, she felt totally alone and alien and wished she never woken up that morning. 

She was so lost in her misery that she never noticed Chris Hooker sneaking up on her. 

"Hi," he said. 

"Hi..." 

"You're Sarah, right?" 

"Yeah..." 

"I'm Chris...I just wanted to apologize for those guys in French--they're assholes." 

Sarah felt attracted to him all right, but she wasn't going to let him off the hook that easy. 

"Well, you know what they say: you are what you hang with..." 

"Right," Chris said, blissfully ignorant of the diss until something clicked..."Wait: you just called me an asshole?" 

Sarah's face broke out in a smile, the first she had since she stepped foot on this campus. 

Chris smiled roguishly at her: these smart-tongued, intellectual girls, they always *did* turn him on... 

"You did, didn't you?" 

"I'm sorry, my defenses are up: people here have been *very* rude to me..." 

Chris looked concerned. 

"Oh *really*? Who else?" 

Sarah quickly looked past him for a second and back. 

"Those three girls...look behind you..." 

Her heart froze as he turned all the way around to get a glimpse...last thing she needed was to get these girls more angry at her (though why they were in the first place was beyond her). 

"*Don't* stare..." 

Chris did a mock stretch and turned his head. 

"Slick..." Sarah laughed. 

The devil-may-care expression on Chris's face dropped at the sight of Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle. They sat under a large mural of Our Lady Of Guadalupe, the three of them glaring at him and Sarah, looking surly. 

"Oh, shit...it's The Bitches of Eastwick"..." 

Sarah didn't quite get the reference. 

"What?" 

"Whatever you do, stay away from them..." 

Hm, she knew these girls were rude but they didn't exactly seem like the faces on Wanted posters... 

"Why?" 

"Well, you see the girl on the right," Chris said, motioning at Nancy, "she's a major *slut*...I don't know from experience or anything... And the one in the middle, she's got these...burn scars...all over her body--I haven't seen them but friends of mine have. Anyway they're---nah, never mind..." 

"What? What..." 

Chris leaned in and looked serious. 

"They're *witches*!" 

Okay, this was sort of disappointing...sounded like a fairy-tale you tell a youngster to put them to sleep and eat their vegetables... 

"Witches?" Sarah asked in disbelief. 

Chris looked away. 

"Well, that's what people say..." 

He changed the subject...it was time to go into what he was really there for... 

"So, what're you doing after school today?" 

Sarah's heart skipped a beat. No wonder she shoo-shooed Jenny from picking her up. Great! 

"Nothing, I guess," she answered flirtatiously 

"Really?" 

"Really!" 

He looked away again. 

"I'm *busy*...football practice. Want to come watch?" 

Geez, this school was full of jerks, Sarah thought. Yet she really liked him. 

"Hmm, football practice...that's soooo tempting!" she said sarcastically, hoping it didn't sound so sarcastic he would want to stop seeing her. 

He flashed her another of his devastating smiles as he left...yeah, he was a jerk, it was pathetic, but she really really liked him. Maybe it was the vulnerability of being new in town, she didn't know...she just knew that she liked him, that her life was suddenly filled with an intriguing new reason to keep going to school, and if that kept her attendance high, what was the harm? 

Chris Hooker likes me, hot damn, she thought. 

Better still, when she looked up, the girls were gone. The...*witches*. Hm. She didn't think anything more about that, it was probably what guys called girls they didn't like since time immemorial. Besides: if *anybody* was a witch around here, it'd have to be... 


	3. The Craft Pt3: The Fourth

**The Craft:**   
**The Book Of The Movie**   


Chapter 3: The Fourth 

It was pretty, the way the branches intertwined with the fence. Sarah peered through it to see Chris play football. It *was* tempting, seeing him get all sweaty and athletic and stuff. She so wanted him, to make her empty life complete. But life was not that simple. 

A rough female voice shot through the air. 

"Sarah!" 

She turned to face the three girls, walking towards her from the trees. Great, she thought, now I have stalkers. 

"Looking for someone?" Nancy asked, flashing her a sly smile that was, Sarah guessed, suppossed to achieve some semblance of "friendly". 

"Some of these football dicks make them watch them practice, as if it's interesting," Bonnie explained. 

Nancy sneered. 

"Yeah, like girlfriend over there...Chris Hooker." 

Sarah suddenly felt stupid, pathetic, to have these girls know about her silly crush with a guy that was addmittedly a jerk. 

"I...I don't even know him..." 

Rochelle sighed...she was the only one equipped to step in and be the welcome-wagon, it seemed...had to, couldn't let this one slip away. Bonnie had told them all about how the girl made the pencil move by itself, and anyone capable of Poltergeist stuff like that definitly put them further down the road to Manon than without. 

"Nancy's *sorry* for what happened in Biology," she said, brushing a curl behind her ear, "And she's mean to everybody, so don't take it personally..." 

Sarah looked at Bonnie. 

"You're Nancy?" 

"Uh-uh, she's Nancy, I'm Bonnie, and that's Rochelle." 

"Hi, I'm Sarah..." 

But Bonnie cut her off. 

"We *know* who you are..." 

Sarah thought back in apprehension to the pencil, and Chris's admonition. 

Nancy smiled hopefully. 

"You...want to go for coffee?" 

Sarah couldn't get caught up in this, she knew if she said yes doors would open that were better left shut... 

"No, I can't, I gotta get home...my dad's waiting for me..." 

Obviously this appeal to familial duty did not hold water with Nancy, who guffawed loudly. 

"You can make something *up*..." 

Somehow, Nancy's words freed Sarah in a strange way, made her smile. The girl seemed so wild, so unencumbered by society's rules. There was a danger around her. So tempting... 

"...Rochelle's ditching practice," Nancy continued. 

Just then, Sarah remembered Chris. She felt like she was almost being disloyal to him by going off with the girls. She looked back at him in indescision. Nancy knew exactly what was going through her head and answered as if she read her mind, 

"He comes on to anything with tits, Sarah." 

"Except me," Bonnie piped in. 

"I'm...not watching him," Sarah said, feeling pathetic again. 

"He spreads *disease*...I speak from personal experience." 

Sarah was shocked to see the seemingly invulnerable Nancy make such a candid statement...the shock showed on Sarah's face, and Nancy hated that someone saw past the armor. 

"Goooo Chris!!!!" Nancy shouted out to him, "C'mon, go for the pass, baby..." 

Chris turned to face the voice and couldn't stop his legs from tangling up beneath him. Sarah couldn't help but giggle as she saw the Mighty Chris brought down to the ground. 

Nancy looked grave. 

"He's a *jerk*." 

The lines from an old Smiths song sang through Sarah's head, 

You shut your mouth,   
How can you say   
I go about things the wrong way   
I am human and I need to be loved   
Just like everybody else does... 

Nancy touched her arm. 

"C'mon..." 

And she confidently started walking, not waiting for Sarah's reply. Bonnie was not so confident. 

"So you're coming, right?" 

"Where are we going?" 

"Shopping." 

"C'mon," Rochelle said. 

Sarah began to panic. If she went off with them, went to wherever these girls went, her life would be altered forever, she knew it. 

"I, I don't have any money..." 

"We get a five-finger discount..." 

"A five-finger discount," Sarah said in resignation...oh great, she was going to go shoplifting with them and end up in juvy hall...that would certainly be life-altering! But still she followed them. 

*** *** *** 

"Sarah, where'd you live before?" Rochelle asked. 

"San Francisco..." 

"Why'd you move?" 

"Because it sucks ass there...'cause my dad wanted to..." 

"It sucks here too..." 

"And I need a car here," 

"You need a car everywhere," Nancy said. Then she noticed something. Sarah's wrists. 

"What's up with that?" she asked, pointing at the white lines that crossed the girl's wrists. 

Sarah was so uncomfortable by the question she wanted just to run away...but she had gotten used to it by now, and knew the best way was a straight answer. 

"I...slit my wrists..." 

"S-sorry..." Nancy answered, embarassed. 

It was startling how Bonnie took her hand and examined the scar the way one would a rare flower. 

"What'd you do it with?" 

"With a kitchen knife..." 

"You even did it the right way," Bonnie said approvingly. 

"Yeah..." Sarah said, puzzled and sickened at her strange sense of pride at the ingenuity. 

Such a tragedy immediately put Sarah into Nancy's book as "cool"--before then she was nothing but annoyed by the seemingly pure white-bread girl. 

"Punk rock!" she said, grabbing Sarah's arm, pulling her towards her, and putting her arm around her shoulder in a show of solidarity. Sarah was a little taken aback by the girl's forwardness, but in a good way. She had finally found some friends. 

Meanwhile, Rochelle turned to Bonnie in concern. 

"The *right way*? How do you know the *right way*?" 

"Shut up, Rochelle..." 

*** *** ***   
Goosebumps travelled up Sarah's arms as she entered the magic shop. Lirio's -- the woman in the Stevie Nicks dress making strange hand gestures over a bowl of herbs must be her. 

Sarah thought: *Totally weird.* Tons of candles, that much she understood. You use candles to...set mood. To decorate. But the African statues on one table, bundles of what looked like chopped grass on another...this lady must be into some straaaange stuff. Voodoo maybe? Or maybe just Bellvue... 

But the woman looked kind though, her long soft brown hair and large dark eyes...she sort of reminded Sarah of her own mother, as strange as that sounds. Sounded strange because Sarah's mom certainly shared none of the kooky instrests this lady had... 

"Sarah," Bonnie said in a summoning whisper. 

"What?" 

Bonnie, her eyes squinting through her greasy bangs and on the lookout for Lirio, handed Sarah a red book. 

"Put this in your bag..." 

Oh greaaaat, *shoplifting*...That was soooo junior high, what next, they were going to filch lipstick at the drug store? 

"No," Sarah said dismissingly as if the girl was a bug near her tennis shoe. She was shocked to see Bonnie, who looked so innocent, flash a disgusted sneer as she pocketed a smaller item. 

"Everything in nature *steals*, you know...big animals steal from little ones..." 

"*They* steal for *survival*...besides, I already have a diary." 

"This is different. You put spells and power thoughts in it, and don't let anyone else read it, ever...except maybe *us*" 

At the word "spells" Sarah's ears pricked up in alarm and for the first time she really looked at the odd book...it was made of leather and had a triangle on it...and it made her think of the book Snow White's stepmother had in the cartoon... 

"You guys are really into all this?" Sarah asked warily. 

Bonnie rolled her eyes and made a secretive, evasive grin. 

"Mmmmnnn sort of," she replied, walking past Sarah. 

Sarah held the book in her hands, flipping the pages cautiously, and strolled towards a doorway in the store blocked off by a curtain with eyes on it. She didn't know why, but she felt deeply drawn to the area, as if it contained the most powerful magnet in the world and she was a helpless little metal bobby pin. 

As her hand clutched the fabric of the curtain and made a motion as if to draw it back, she felt as if she was watching someone else do it, as if it was not really her...which made the shock of feeling Lirio's sudden, firm grip on her wrist all the more acute. 

"That's *not* for you," the woman said in a forbidding tone. 

Sarah was in terror. Terror not only of being caught by Lirio, but by the whole notion of her doing something out-of-the-ordinary like that. She was a good teen. She never got into trouble, except for the whole attempted suicide thing, and even then she was hurting herself, not anyone else... 

"U-uhm, I'm sorry..." 

Lirio could feel the anxiety shooting off the girl in waves, and quickly softened her expression. She gently turned Sarah's hand around and smiled approvingly. 

"What a beautiful ring," she remarked, and rested her hand atop it. "It was your *mother's*..." 

Ohmigod, Sarah thought. How could she have know that? She suddenly felt a little flushed, but not in a bad way. 

"Ye-ah...it was..." 

Lirio's head motioned at the red book. 

"Are you going to pay for those?" 

"U-uh-hunn.." 

The woman nodded approvingly. 

"You're not like your friends," she said, walking Sarah to the counter. Then she looked at the girl more closely, playfully even. "You know how to use candles?" 

What an odd question. 

"Yeah: you light the wick?" 

"More than that," she replied, holding several candles in her hand thoughtfully. "Red is for love, black...Actually..." 

She pulled a small paperback book from the shelf behind her. In big, flowery letters was the title: 

*The Craft* 

"Why don't you read that...it explains it all." 

It was a long day, and Sarah just wanted to be done with it, so she looked at the tome nonchalantly and nodded. 

"Okay..." 

"Twenty dollars," Lirio said with a big smile, putting that book and the red one into a brown bag and taking Sarah's green wrinkled bill. 

Quite the saleslady, she thought. Hope she didn't think she had a customer for life or anything... 

"You know, I've never read anything about this stuff before...I mean, I don't follow it..." 

"Maybe you are a natural witch...your power comes from *within*" 

This comment floored Sarah way more than the one about her mother...but instead of being outraged, or terrified, or laughing it off as the delusion of some aging New Agey chick, it actually kind of made some sort of sen-- 

The rest of the girls were suddenly behind her and headng for the door. 

"C'mon, Sarah,"Bonnie said, holding the door open for her. 

Lirio watched the four leave with a calm, yet knowing expression.   


*** *** *** 

Downtown LA at night. Not the place you want to be, especially four teenage girls with pocketbooks theoretically filled with Mommy and Daddy's cash. Maybe the others were used to it, but the police sirens, prostitutes, and crazy people gave her the chills. And apparently, their excursion wasn't over yet. 

"You guys, I think I should head home..." 

"Just keep looking straight ahead and keep walking," Bonnie said. 

Sarah tried to mimic her companions's expressionless faces and confident strides, but there was just so much chaos and confusion there...suddenly, a disheveled woman with a baby in her arms accosted her, 

"My baby needs some food," the woman pleaded, her child wailing in her arms. 

"Don't give her money, you're gonna get *nailed*," warned Rochelle as she tugged on Sarah's sleeve. 

Sarah didn't know what to do...she couldn't just leave a starving baby like that...and the noise from the environment...so many people...and right behind the woman... 

The man with the snake! 

He began to totter to her slowly like an excited, curious infant, balancing a snake in his hands. 

"Hey, I know you..." 

She had to get away-- 

"I got a snake for you--" 

She had to get away, someplace to breathe-- 

"Hey, I've got to talk to you...I had a *dream* about you--" 

Had to get away, pursuing her through the crowd, he's getting louder-- 

"In my dream...you were dead...YOU WERE DEAD!" 

God! Have to get away-- 

"HEY I'M TALKING TO YOU!!!!" 

In her haste to flee she bumped into a tall, Vincent Pricey priest-looking guy who summoned her to return to Jesus...she didn't know who was more frightening, she just knew she had to get away...she didn't want to die-- 

"I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT--I'M IN TOUCH WITH THE *MAN*" 

The frightened girl ran into traffic, narrowly missing a car...still the snake man followed... 

Oh God, she just wished he'd go away, that something would make him go away... 

At the same time, the other three, witnessing the spectacle, wished the same thing, that he would go away, though Nancy's thoughts were a little more extreme, her eyes cold and blazing at the same time... 

"LISTEN TO ME!!!!" 

Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway--like four voices noiselessly humming, blending into one... 

The shriek of a car's tires and scream of it's horn as it plowed into the man, the man's body bouncing off the windshield with a sickening thud and rolling down the wet black asphalt, limp as a doll, now stopping lifeless... 

All at once the four girls's eyes met, sheer electricity. 

Bonnie clutched Sarah's arm breathlessly and pulled her away. 

"C'mon Sarah, let's get out of here..." 

Running away, it almost felt like they had fled from murdering that man with all eight of their slender little hands. But of course, that's crazy. 

*** *** *** 

They headed for a wooded area behind the highway, hearts thumping, legs running, dancing, arms out as if they had the power of flight. Sarah hadn't felt such a sense of danger and excitement since she was a little kid, playing with firecrackers. 

"Whoaaaa!!!!" 

"OhmyGOD!!!" 

"We hit him, the car hit him and we made it happen!" Bonnie exclaimed, her and Sarah twisting excited in the wind like two schoolgirls. 

The thought that they could have such power was so wonderful to Nancy's mind that she had to shoot it down lest she be horribly disappointed by its inaccuracy. 

"Maybe, maybe not..." 

"Definitely," Bonnie said she plopped down on an abandoned red couch, Nancy next to her and Rochelle and Sarah on the ground. "I thought to myself: it's gonna hit him!" 

"I thought it too!" Rochelle yelped. 

"Well, I thought it too," Nancy replied, "but that doesn't..."   
"Sarah did too...Sarah, did you think it?" Bonnie asked. 

"Yuh-yeah..." 

The previously reserved Bonnie burst forth into an excitement that made her whole face glow, and gave promise to a beauty that might had been hiding all this time... 

"Well that's it, you guys, Sarah's the Fourth! North, South, East and West, we can make things happen, this is it, this is real!" 

Nancy couldn't fight the wide smile that overtook her face...she felt stoned with glee. 

"Shit..." 

Sarah shared in the euphoria, knowing it was wrong to grin at another's misfortune, but the sheer fantasticness of the situation canceling it out. Her eyes were wide with wonder tempered with fear. 

"Hey you guys, this is really weird..." 

Nancy, seeing her companion teetering between emotions, jumped in to reassure her and keep her on the side she knew she herself was firmly on. She didn't come this far only to have things blocked by misguided sentiment over some creepy dead bum. 

"Hey, he was after you...he was going to HURT you, man...it's not our fault, I mean..." 

"Hey guys, maybe he'll really *listen* now..." Rochelle said. 

"Who?" Sarah asked. 

"Manon," 

At the mention of this thing's name the atmosphere suddenly became a little quieter, a little more reverent. Sarah could tell by the placid, knowing look the three girls shared that it had to be some religious-type figure. 

"What, that's like God?" 

"No, man invented God, this is older than that," Bonnie said, taking a drag on a cigarette. A flask of whiskey was passed to Sarah. 

"Say, do you guys worship the devil?" 

All three girls bellowed in laughter, and Sarah nervously managed to let out a chuckle herself. 

"It's like God and the devil," Nancy explained breathlessly, perched on the edge of the red sofa cushion like a bird ready to shoot in the air. "It's *everything*...it's the trees, it's the ground, it's the rocks, it's the moon: it's everything!" 

Sarah thought she understood. 

"Nature," 

"If god and the devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium they played on...it would be the sun that shone down on them..." 

This was large, almost too large for Sarah to wrap her brain around. 

"So does things like tonight happen to you a lot?" Bonnie asked as she looked at the girl admiringly. 

Sarah was kind of dumbstruck, almost touched...nobody had ever asked her that before, much less made it sound like something she should be proud of, like a skill... 

"No, not like that...other stuff..." 

Rochelle regarded the girl in awe. "Where did you learn it?" 

"I...dunno." 

Bonnie took another sharp drag and nodded sagely. 

"A *natural witch*" 

"I hate it, it's always getting screwed up...it's like, sometimes I'll want it to rain and a pipe will burst in my room and it'll just get *flooded*" 

It was nice to talk about such things freely and laugh with the girls, but the smile on Nancy's face started to noticeably drop with each passing sentence. This had to be bullshit, Nancy thought: she herself could never do anything like that and she had been practicing and studying for a long time. This Sarah chick was just starting, didn't even know what a Book of Shadows was, c'mon... 

"Yeah, right..." Nancy sneered. 

"No, really, er, um...it's like I'll want it to get really quiet, and I'll wish for it and wish for it...and I'll go deaf for three days straight..." 

Nancy adjusted herself in her seat with a cocky flair, the flask in one hand and a burning cigarette in the air. 

"If you can do that: ever heard of invoking the spirit?" 

Sarah's face turned blank. That sounded heavy, made her think of demons. 

"No," she answered quietly. 

Nancy leaned in closer, her grin ear-to-ear. 

"It's when you call him..." 

"Who?" 

"Man-on," Nancy said, rolling her eyes at how dumb, how *pathetic* this mousy little Sarah was. "It's like...you take him into you...it's like he fills you..." 

Bonnie closed her eyes and tilted her head back in rapture while Nancy's eyes glittered in glee and Rochelle nodded in bliss. Sarah began to feel really uncomfortable...it was like the three girls were talking about some hot night spent with their boyfriend and not worshipping some god. 

"He takes everything that has gone wrong in your life," Nancy continued, "and he makes it *all better again*" 

Sarah looked at Nancy in horror. 

"Nothing makes everything all better again." 

Nancy's lips curled in derision. 

"Maybe not for *you*" 

That's all Sarah needed to hear. These were like some Manson-girl chicks... 

She jumped up and gathered her bags. 

"Where are you going?" Bonnie asked, crestfallen. 

"You guys are freaking me out," Sarah said as she started to run away. 

Nancy knew it. She knew this mousy bitch couldn't handle it. Girl's probably scared of her own period. 

"Oh-ho! She's *scared*!" 

Bonnie couldn't believe that her only tangible hope for a better future through magick had just left their makeshift circle. 

"Nancy, we *need* her..." 

"Like a hole in the head..." 

But Rochelle managed to stay calm. She was very in touch with her intuition, always had been, and something told her not to worry. 

"She'll be back." 

*** *** ***   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. The Craft Pt 4: To Be Normal

The Craft Pt. 4: To Be Normal 

Sarah walked away quickly, never looking back; she wanted to run, but didn't want to let anyone think she was scared. Heck, those weird girls probably thought she was a big baby for not digging their "satan" talk--no, not Sa-tan. Man-on. Probably the same thing, wrapped up in one big cult where they drink each other's blood and sacrifice babies. She dropped coins into the bus's receptacle and sat at the front--little old ladies be damned, she wanted to be where the driver could see her, not trapped in the isolation of the back. 

The back--that's where the weirdos sit. Like the homeless guy with the snake. 

He told her he saw her dead. And then she looked at him, all four girls looked at him, and he... 

Died. 

No, it wasn't them. That's ridiculous. Nice safe bus, nice safe neighborhood with nice pretty houses... 

Nice soon-to-be-familiar driveway. Nice steps. Nice porch. Home. 

*** 

She felt like a heel lying to her Dad. About going to the library. Well, there were books in Lirio's shop... 

Books! She looked sheepishly in the brown paper bag that she had been mindlessly clutching this whole time. Even purchasing such items as the witch "textbook" made her feel marked, complicit, dragged into something she couldn't get out of. 

Sarah started to quietly panic: she didn't want to be one of the outcast girls, the girls who sit at the back and stare at everybody else! She wanted so very much to be normal, even though it had been so hard, growing up, without a mother, with all those horrible visions... 

Wait a minute-- 

In the corner of her eye she could see the three girls. For real. They were there. She couldn't turn around to be sure if it was something else, the shape of her bureau, anything. She couldn't dare, because if it really really was them, she was going to freak. 

One held a bell, a small brass bell, it flared golden as the light hit it, and crowded the vision of the girls out with its brilliance. Sarah's heart began to thump loudly as the bell's clapper struck its sides, calling, calling, calling... 

A glance at the phone on the nighttable snapped her out of her reverie. It wasn't the clear, metallic sound of the brass bell anymore, it was the electronic chirp of her cordless. She made the phone jump in her trembling hands, as she fumbled to bring it to her ear. 

"H-hello?!" 

"Sarah? What's wrong?" 

Chris Hooker! 

*** 

"You sounded strange when I called last night. I didn't think you'd come." 

They were sitting on the roof of some building, bathed in the rosy glow of a huge neon sign that threatened to overcome the night. 

"Yeah..." Sarah answered, trying to play it cool. To play it normal. 

"I thought you'd be hanging out with those girls. The ones with the weird heads." 

As she took a swig of the beer bottle Chris handed her, the heads of Nancy, Rochelle and Bonnie suddenly popped into her mind...three heads in a row like oranges on a kitchen counter. 

"Weird heads," she laughed, "what's weird about their heads?" 

"Well, that one girl, she has a big head...looks like a St. Bernard..." 

"Really, haha...I haven't noticed her..." Her brain winced at the lie, not because she particularly liked the girls, but because of the principle of the thing: she was feigning stupidity in order to get her guy. That's what it boiled down to. 

"I hate that "Big Head" thing...of course, it's better than that "Shrunken Head" thing, with that little tiny shrunken head hanging from the rearview mirror..." 

"What's your obsession with heads?" she asked, not realizing the mine field she just set herself up for. 

"Well, I was just noticing how good yours is..." 

She didn't get it. 

"You like my head..." 

"Yeah, it's a good head, he said as he cradled her face in his hands. "Good for kissing..." 

Sarah felt a warmth flush through her body at his touch, her good ol' thumpy heart kicking into high gear.   


Trey walked by with his girlfriend. 

"Well, we'll see you later, bro..." 

"Yes, it was nice to meet you, Sarah," the blonde girl said to her, waving. This was the type of person she was supposed to be friends with. But the blank, contented look on the girl's face only sharply reminded her of such a female's opposite: Nancy. 

*** 

Nancy ensconced herself deep within the bowels of her room, dragging on her cigarette with a combination of nervousness and anger. She never considered herself actually "living" in the space...more like barricaded, a myriad of tacked-up pictures and half-melted candles acting as sentinels against the threat that lay so close by, just the cheap, thin walls of the trailer standing in the way of The Horror: 

"Nan-ceeeeee! Did you see the remote? Where did you hide the remote?!" 

She screamed back at her mother at the top of her lungs, "I DON'T HAVE IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!" 

Nancy sucked the smoke through the little cotton filter in frustration. Goddess, what if Bonnie was right? What if Sarah really was the fourth? That would mean she really screwed the pooch in the mystical sweepstakes by driving her away. 

Well, who cares about that pathetic girl, anyway? It was clear to Nancy that the girl had no interest in anything else but bedding Chris Hooker. She wasn't the type to devote herself to their Craft. 

She took another drag, remembering Chris's touch. 

*** 

Sarah's eyes suddenly widened in concern as she watched the couple leave and Chris sarcastically bidding them farewell. 

"C'mon,"Chris said, taking her hand, "let's go to my house. No one's there." 

Sarah pulled her arm away shyly but firmly. 

"No, I can't...I gotta go home." 

The light left Chris's eyes, leaving his look hard and cold. Sarah hoped he'd understand. She just didn't do things like that...just like that... 

"Alright..." he slowly muttered, turning away for what seemed like eons. In that unbearable time frame Sarah felt a whole gamut of emotions, none of them good: guilt, stupidity, fear. 

"Are you mad?" she asked timidly. 

"No," he said a little too fast, a little too loud. 

*** 

Nancy slept with a recently-extinguished red candle held against her chest. She did what she had to do, more to comfort herself than in the belief anything would really happen. Nothing ever really happened, no matter how much she begged Manon, chanted to him. That red candle used to be quite tall, almost a foot-and-a-half long; it saw a lot of use last summer, mostly in conjunction with a certain doomed affair with Chris. She remembered how she stared into the flame, picturing her beloved coming back to her... 

*** 

Sarah really thought things would be ok, as she methodically unwrapped some more items from a box. A red crystal bowl...she walked about the partially furnished room, looking for a spot where it would look just right. 

Maybe he'd be a little hurt, that's all. I mean, he really didn't expect her to do it just like that, on a first date. She wasn't a slut. 

*** 

In magic, you had to concentrate on one thing at a time. One wish for every spell. You had to focus. 

Nancy had long since gave up on Chris. Chris couldn't make her happy. Chris couldn't save her from the white trash trailer hell she found herself born into. 

Only one thing could do that. One presence. 

*** 

Sarah found herself early for class, so she sat down and started to get a jump on her homework. She half-heartedly expected Chris to call last night, to tell her that everything was ok...or at the very least, maybe a hastily scribbled note stuck in her locker : "Hey Sarah, what's up? --C." But nothing happened. Oh well, the day was young. Maybe he was shy about yesterday, afraid he hurt her feelings. Maybe later, after class, she would be bold and make the first move. 

A voice spoke in her head: "You, bold? Oh, you have no idea, Sarah...pathetic!" 

  
Nancy, Rochelle, and Bonnie suddenly appeared before her desk. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts she never noticed their approach. Now she was surrounded. 

"So hot stuff, how'd it go?" 

Nancy, looking at her with this smug, poisonous expression. 

"How'd what go?" 

"Your date with Chris" 

How'd...how'd they know? Maybe they really were wi-- 

"What are you talking about?" Sarah asked, trying to seem bored. 

"Sarah, he told everybody," Rochelle said matter-of-factly, as Bonnie fidgeted nervously with her hands. 

"He told everybody what?" 

"That you guys did it," said Nancy. 

Sarah felt a stab of adrenaline in her heart. 

"But we didn't. Do it." 

Nancy's big, blue, globe-like eyes shined ominously as she told the horrible tale. 

"Well, maybe he was just trying to save face then...Because he was going around the whole school," her voice dropped to a whisper, Nancy, so considerate, "saying that you were the lousiest lay he's EVER had, and coming from him, that's pretty bad." 

"No, he didn't.." 

"He did..." 

"He said the same thing about Nancy," Bonnie chimed in. 

Sarah felt as she was in a nightmare, a living nightmare that rivaled her dreaded snake-visions in sheer horror. For the first time she noticed the group of girls staring. Laura Lizzie and her friends. The normal girls. The look they branded into Sarah's soul was: Slut/Freak/Loser. 

"Told you he was a jerk," Nancy said. 

*** 

There had to be some mistake, Sarah thought, all the blood rushing to her head and making her feel feverish. She walked away from the girls as if in a trance and headed straight to Chris and the boys by the lockers. No. There had to be an explanation. Nancy must have made it up. So she would join her witch-club. Things like this didn't happen. People were civilized. If you were nice to people, people were nice to you. Nobody goes around saying things like that, things so hurtful, just to hurt-- 

She took a deep breath and addressed him 

"Hi...can I talk to you for a second?" 

Chris was standing behind Mitt, almost like...hiding from her, guilt scrawled across his face. 

"Chris?" 

Mitt suddenly stepped forward. 

"I'm sorry, Chris is really busy, maybe we can set something up (nice jacket) for sometime later in the week?" 

She ignored the annoying little turd and continued, 

"Why'd you lie about me?" 

Chris suddenly turned on her. 

"Look, I don't want to go out with you again...ok?" he said loudly, so everyone in the hall could hear and share in her humiliation. 

"Stop begging, it's pathetic..." He mock-pleaded, walking away. 

There was that word again. "PATHETIC." That word that was steadily torturing her, self-torture... 

She wanted to say some thing witty, something nasty, something...something a girl like Nancy would say. But she could only bite her lip and say: 

"Hey Chris...Fuck you!" 

Chris was a bit taken aback, he didn't expect her to stare him down...what he expected, frankly, was for her to burst into tears and beg his forgiveness. And maybe, just maybe, he'd let her "forgive" her. Hey, that's how he nailed Nancy... 

"Nah," he said as he disappeared down the hall, his voice breaking like a pimply 12-year-old. 

Trey turned to Mitt: "But I would." 

Mitt, also a bit disappointed that Sarah's emotions were hardier than he figured, nevertheless felt heartened by the wet beginning to accumulate in her stoic eyes. 

"She's going to cry...and then I'm going to cry...and then we're all going to cry!" 

And Trey and Mitt laughed all the way to next period, leaving Sarah to lean against the lockers, staring into space as her vision blurred.   
  
  
  
  



	5. The Craft Pt5: Personal Hells

The Craft Chapter 5: Personal Hells  
  
Rochelle loved the quiet & solitude of standing on the high-dive board. Looking below her she saw an azure paradise of rippling blue water; looking straight ahead of her, she saw nothing but "sky." She saw the act of diving as one of purification, baptism. It would not be exaggerating to say that Rochelle regarded the entire act of swimming as not simply a mere "sport" – it was a religious experience, on par with any ritual utilizing chants & candles.  
  
She confidently looked ahead of her at the sky, and then began her graceful descent. Laura Lizzie and those other racist Barbie Dolls were millions of miles away...  
  
"Shark!"  
  
Rochelle's nervous system registered a momentary blip of terror...momentary, but it was all that was needed to throw off her dive and send her splashing into the water flat on her back.   
  
As she fell through the water, the laughter of cruel girls could be still be discerned...  
  
Rochelle let the blue darkness envelop her flushed cheeks and hot skin as a protective barrier. But she knew she couldn't stay there forever.   
  
"Brilliant," Laura mockingly complimented her, clapping her hands as her crony watched in evil glee, "Superb!"  
  
Rochelle angrily avoided the faces of her tormentors as she grabbed her towel & left the pool. She tried to be dignified, but it was hard. Her mother always told her to just "stand tall" and not let people like Laura know that she hurt her. But then she remembered what her grandfather told her...  
  
If you don't stand up to them, they'll never stop.   
  
They'll never stop.

Rochelle initially decided to go along with her mother's approach. She calmly walked into the locker room and pretended like nothing was wrong, ignoring the fact that Laura was preening her long bleached locks only a few feet away.  
  
Laura turned to her friend & gestured at her hairbrush with a frown.  
  
"Oh yuck, it looks like a pubic hair got on my hairbrush...oh wait, it's just one of Rochelle's."  
  
As the muscles in the back of Rochelle's neck tightened & her teeth clenched, she suddenly decided that her grandfather might have been right on the money with this "dealing with prejudiced idiots" business–after all, he personally boycotted the buses in Alabama.  
  
Hmm...she could grab Lizzie by the hair and smack her face into the counter...but such violence was personally beneath her & besides Lizzie's hair was so brittle it'd probably break off anyway.  
  
Rochelle walked right up to Lizzie and looked her in the eyes.  
  
"Why are you doing this to me, Laura?"  
  
Laura's formerly wicked smile of derision suddenly became cold & serious...Rochelle didn't know which expression was the more disturbing.  
  
"Because I don't like _Negroids_."  
  
Rochelle was too horrified by Laura's statement to even think about challenging the moronic term she used.   
  
Sure, she knew there was some racism in the school. It was subtle...ok, maybe not-so-subtle. After all, the only girls who befriended her there were Nancy & Bonnie. But the racism was unspoken. Until now.   
  
She felt like crying, but it was not something she did.

Bonnie sunk into the baggy black overcoat she wore and tried to lose herself in her own little world. In that world, she could wear T-shirts & halter-tops...maybe even a bathing suit! It was the world where Manon made all the pain go away...  
  
But she guessed that in the real world, doctors were supposed to do that. In theory, anyway.  
  
"I must tell you again, this is a very experimental procedure..."  
  
Bonnie blocked out the droning voice of the doctor & her mother's timid "We understand."   
  
Experimental procedure. That always meant pain. And in the end, she still looked the same. Like a lizard-skinned freak.  
  
A nurse directed Bonnie to the changing-room. As she took off her clothes, she meticulously avoided looking at her body. She was very good at that.

Bonnie placed her head in the depression cut out of the table. The table was probably designed that way so she wouldn't have to see the long Hellraiser needles poised right above her back.   
  
Yeah, her mom's quiet acquiescence to any and all doctors waving a "miracle cure" in front of her face did annoy her sometimes. But Bonnie was really glad she was there in the operating room. She was scared to death. She figured she shouldn't be, since she went through so much of this already...like she should be "used to it" by now. But each procedure was different. Except for one thing...  
  
She felt the needle plunge into the rough, mottled skin of her back.   
  
"Aieeeeeee!!!!!!"  
  
...they all hurt.

The wind pounded upon Sarah's window, incessantly, pleadingly.   
  
It was going to be quite a storm, tonight.  
  
Let the whole world be swallowed up, for all she cared.   
  
No. It wasn't the world's fault. The world was fine. The world was fine, Chris was fine, everybody was fine. The problem was with her. She was pathetic. If she went away, the world would be a better place.  
  
That strange, mean voice spoke to her inside her head again:  
  
"But you already tried that. You already tried going away. But you couldn't even do that right. So terribly, completely pathetic."  
  
Sarah ignored the howling of the storm and the darkness of her room. In her mind's eye, she could see the fluorescent glare of the bathroom of her old house...how the cruel sharpness of the straight razor contrasted with the cozy decorative soaps and potpourri...  
  
...how the blade sunk into the flesh of her arms like butter...she didn't even feel that...it was so unreal...she only knew...that the visions had to stop...the isolation had to stop...it all had to stop...time had to stop...  
  
Was that mean foreign voice dwelling in her brain then? Telling her that she was pathetic? Telling her that she had better just "get on with it"...  
  
...get on with it...her blood-soaked hands shakily grasped the glass of water...get on with it...take these pills...do it right...do it right...  
  
She had lost so much blood that she was unable to maintain her grip on the glass, and it plunged towards the tiled floor and shattered into a thousand pieces...a thousand pieces, amongst the cruel spatter of the blood..._her_ blood...  
  
And then Sarah was back. In this new house. During a storm.

Nancy pulled the black PVC of her jacket up above her head in an attempt to protect her from the storm. Taking public transportation home & then walking 5 blocks from the bus stop in the pouring rain...yep, she thought, sounds about right. For my So-Called White Trash Life. Oh look, here's my trailer now...  
  
She always thought she was better than this life...wasn't she smarter than the other kids in school? Isn't that why she got the scholarship to go to St. Benedict's? Those spoon-fed rich brats couldn't hold a candle to her academically. That's why they all hated her. Well screw them. Screw everybody.  
  
One day the magic will work. I mean, really really work. And all this won't matter. Really.  
  
A drenched, beaten dog nervously skittered out of her way as she passed.  
  
The lights went out as soon as she stepped though the door. Bzzzt.  
  
The shrill of her mother's frantic, drunken voice shot through the house:  
  
"Ah geezus, the lights are off again?! Didn't you pay the bill?"  
  
Several strategically-placed pails & bowls accented the decor of the "family room" (ha!), nearly overflowing with leaked water from the flimsy ceiling.  
  
"It's the storm, Grace, it's the connection, Grace," her step-father said, his big, fat, stinking carcass lying upon the threadbare couch.   
  
I'd like to strategically-place the barrel of a gun against that lecherous bastard's bald head, Nancy thought, gripping a lighted cigarette and making a b-line for her room. She fell onto the bed without even taking off her jacket. Just lying there in the dark, feverishly wiping rainwater off the skin of her face.  
  
"Well, the other neighbors' lights aren't out," her mother continued. "I give you money and you can't even pay a bill? A bill? What are you good for?"  
  
"You know what I'm good for," that horrible scumbucket replied. Great. Now she would probably have to listen to them have sex. Disgusting life.  
  
Nancy kept wiping the water off her face, then rubbed her eyes, then just wanted to erase herself from the whole disgusting scene.   
  
She read in books hat she had the power to manifest her own reality...that _she_ had the power...and she wanted to believe that...but what did she have to show for it? She acted so confidently about the spells & Manon in front of Bonnie & Rochelle...but deep down...she feared...what if she was wrong? What if she was simply delusional, driven half-mad by rejection, abuse, and self-hatred?  
  
What if...  
  
**"No! It has to be!"  
**  
At that moment, the lights suddenly flew on.


	6. The Craft Pt 6: The Visitation

I want to first thank all the people who have wrote reviews and encouraged me to continue this. I'll never make a cent off this book, but if it has given you pleasure then it's been worth it. Hope to have this finished in time for the tenth anniversary of the movie in Spring 06.

The Craft: Book Of the Movie Part 6:  
The Visitation

You would hardly think that the four girls attentively scribbling in their notebooks during Biology had only a night before been in complete Hell–each one in her own unique hell. But the sun had to rise eventually, and with it...a new hope, a new energy. It was weird. By all rights Sarah, Nancy, Rochelle and Bonnie should have been depressed. By all rights, they should have given in.

But Manon had other plans.

"Hey Sarah," Nancy furtively whispered, craning her head past Bonnie to grab the light-haired brunette's attention. "You wanna go on a little...field trip?"

"Miss Downs," the gray-habited nun sitting at the front of the class chided the Goth chick with the short, elegantly coiffed black hair, "I hate to interrupt your little social gathering..."

Nance, Bonnie, and Rochelle immediately broke into hysterics...it was hard not to when that silly skeleton with the slack jaw and the goofy grin was hanging next to "Mother Superior" like that. The fourth girl tried to stay serious, gluing the corners of her mouth down as if she was too enraptured by the intricacies of the protozoa to notice. She wasn't sure how she was to act around them, if they were friends or what. Though didn't the Mean One just ask her to go out with them?

_Field Trip?_

"Sorry, Sister," Nancy spit out between badly-suppressed laughter.

And the laughter was, apparently, infectious. Sarah let her defenses melt away with the sound of her own giggling.

She was In.

The name of the bus they rode was called "Second Wind," and it was very appropriate. For despite the sunglasses-clad quartet's outwardly sulky, tough exterior they felt quite happy and excited, possessing the same buoyant energy as the three rugrats with the blond pigtails that were staring at them. Sarah's first instinct was to smile and wave at them–she adored children, and hoped to be an elementary school teacher some day. But she couldn't lose her "cool pose," couldn't break ranks with the others.

And Nancy? She hated Brats. So...defenseless, puny. _Pathetic_.

And what were the Brats staring at, anyway? Nancy lowered her red-black shades at the children, staring at them coldly.

"Mommy, is it Halloween?" one of the kids asked with all sincerity, the others twisting around in their seat to watch the four girls exit the bus. It wasn't that they were dressed all that weird–you know, except for Nancy, all-black and Gothic as usual. But it was just...the confident way they walked, confidence mixed with a faint air of superiority & menace. The shades didn't help. And Sarah, Bonnie, and Rochelle had as of late taken to the custom of wearing pagan-like jewelry and other subtle, witchy items–due in no small part to Nancy's influence.

The spot they chose to get off at was near a local nature-walk, but somewhat on the deserted side. The portly, mustachioed bus-driver said in a patronizing, well-intentioned warning,

"You girls watch out for those weirdos."

Fool. How could he have known about their plans, about the fact that they wanted to be alone? Hell, they could more than defend themselves. Didn't "snake guy" find that out the hard way?

There was something about that bus driver that reminded Nancy of Stan. She looked back at him with mocking eyes as she descended the last step and planted her booted foot on the sidewalk.

"We ARE the weirdos, mister," she said with impudent glee.

The woods were certainly bedecked in all of Manon's glory, dappled sunlight bathing the four girls, birds gliding past them. They enthusiastically chatted amongst themselves about the magick they were about to embark on, the first real, purposeful magick they would perform together.

_Shall I see tonight, sister, bathed in magic greet_

_Shall we meet on the hilltop, where the two roads meet _

Poor Bonnie hung back a little from the other girls, unable to fully enjoy the warm beauty of the day–unlike the others she wore a long, heavy coat. Hiding herself, even from her friends...so ashamed of the scars that she never asked for or deserved. But maybe this time...Manon would listen. It was so crazy to think that, to hope for a miracle...

_Danger is great joy, dark is bright as fire _

_Happy is our family, lonely is our ward_

"Earth, Air, Fire, Water..."

In the clearing Nancy, Bonnie, Sarah & Rochelle sat, holding hands, bowing their heads down in concentration, and chanting the Elements.

"Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Earth, Air, Fire, Water..."

It was not merely enough to say the words, Nancy had taught them, but they had to mean it, _live_ it, see the elements real and vital in their minds...

Each had a particular element "assigned" to them. Nancy was Fire–no surprise there. Bonnie was Air, though ironically she spent so much of her life too bundled up in obscuring layers of clothing to really "air out." Rochelle the award-winning swimmer was Water. And Sarah was Earth.

"Earth"  
"Air"  
"Fire"  
"Water"

And as they chanted, there was a subtle shift in the world around them, in their immediate surroundings. Everything, all the living bits of Nature, seemed to be just a wee bit more attentive than they were before. Even the blades of grass...seemed to lean towards the girls as if attracted by the sun.

The pretty African-American girl with the corkscrew curls rested the blade of the athame gently against Bonnie's chest. Perhaps to a clueless bystander, the sight of these two standing in the middle of a field pointing knives at each other would seem...crazy. But there was a method to it, and Bonnie seemed completely calm.

"It is better that you should rush upon this blade," Rochelle said, "than to enter the Circle with fear in your heart. How do you enter?"

"With perfect love and perfect trust," Bonnie answered, reciting the words as she had been taught. Nancy looked on approvingly as Rochelle handed the blade over to Bonnie and the two girls shared a chaste kiss on the lips.

Then Bonnie approached Nancy and pointed the blade at her.

"It is better that you should rush upon this blade than to enter the circle with fear in your heart. How do you enter?"

"With perfect love and perfect trust," Nancy replied solemnly.

A knot tied in Sarah's stomach. She was next, having started the ritual by pointing the athame at Rochelle. But that was Rochelle. Rochelle and Bonnie, they were fine...but _Nancy_? Pointing a blade at HER?

The light-haired brunette felt guilty as she tried to stifle the tide of suspicion and fear that rose up her body, as the pointy blade poked harmlessly but poked nonetheless at the base of her heck, Nancy Downs at the other end of it.

"It is better that you should rush upon this blade than to enter the circle with fear in your heart. How do you enter?"

For a second Sarah could hardly speak, could hardly speak as she looked into Nancy's cold blue eyes. She felt almost...dead.

"With perfect love...and perfect trust."

"That's a girl," the Goth girl replied with a faint smile, offering her cheek to receive Sarah's kiss.

Then Nancy thrust the blade high into the air...

"As above..."

...then sunk it deep into the ground.

"...so below."

Nancy had always said to the girls that they would never involve blood in the rituals...that it wasn't the sort of magick that they did, that blood was only for the left-hand path. But surely a tiny little drop of the stuff as pricked from their fingers with a pin...surely a little bit dropped into the communal wine chalice wouldn't hurt?

It was as fine an altar as ever was spread back in times of the Golden Age of Magick–crystals, runes, tarot cards, even a clay pentacle. Sarah placed a framed photograph of her late mother in the mix as well...it seemed strangely appropriate, as if there was something the still figure in the sundress could contribute to the proceedings.

The other girls sucked at the still-fresh wounds on their fingers as Rochelle brushed back her hair and picked up the chalice.

"I drink of my sisters," she began, "and I ask for the ability...to not hate those who hate me. Especially racist pieces of bleached-blond shit like Laura Lizzie." Rochelle smiled in confident defiance and drank from the cup.

"Right on," Sarah said in support, taking the silver chalice from her friend. "I drink of my sisters, and I ask to love myself more, and to allow myself to be loved more by others..." She produced a photo from inside a book and dropped it upon the altar guiltily. "...especially _Chris Hooker_. I know it's pathetic..."

"_Definitely_ pathetic," Rochelle chimed in good-naturedly.

_Pathetic_, Nancy thought to herself darkly as outwardly she showed concern and simply nodded her head.

Sarah having drunk her share, the chalice was passed on to Bonnie. By this point Bonnie had gotten "brave" enough to let one side of the coat fall off her shoulder a bit, revealing the horribly scarred skin beneath. Here, away from the world, surrounded only by her "sisters," she could take the chance to let a little bit of her Self show...

"I drink of my sisters, and I take into myself the power to be beautiful..._outside_ as well as in."

Now it was Nancy's turn. It suddenly struck her the awesomeness of her position, her opportunity to petition the Great Manon for anything she wanted. She paused for a few seconds, her mind racing. What should she ask for? Money? Chris back? _What_?

She cleared her throat and began,

"I drink of my sisters," she said slowly and carefully, "and I take into myself..._all the power of Manon_."

"That's all?" Sarah asked with light-hearted sarcasm as Nancy drank.

And Nancy drank...and drank...and drank until the red wine spilled down her chin.

"Blessed be," she said with a large grin when she was through.

"Blessed be," the other girls chimed in, laughing. "Thought you were going to burp," Sarah added through a giggle. In fact the girls were having such a splendid time being silly that they didn't notice the first butterflies...

Then Rochelle tilted back her head. "Oh my God," she said in wonder as she took in the sight of the hundreds of golden winged creatures hovering above them.

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Look!"

The quartet gasped at the beauty of the etherial creatures that now surrounded them.

"It's Manon," Bonnie said matter-of-factly, voicing what the others silently knew without a doubt.

"He's _listening_ to us," Nancy said, wincing at the sound of her own breathless shock. She never thought this would happen. She never thought that this would really happen. Never really dreamed it...

Bonnie tentatively let a butterfly rest upon her hand, a little frightened, a lot awed. Then she let out a laugh of pure joy.

And Nancy kept staring up at them, staring past them, into the sky, into the sun, into the boundless unchanging face of Manon.

_Father, we are waiting for you to appear.  
Do you feel the panic, can you see the fear ?  
Mother, we are waiting for you to give consent.  
If there's to be a marriage, we need contempt._

Danger is great joy, dark is bright as fire,  
Happy is our family, lonely is the ward.  



	7. The Craft Pt 7: The Warning

The Craft Chapter 7: The Warning

To some of the recent commenters--chill, I'm trying to finish this puppy. Really.

(Note: This is an entirely made-up sequence I've based on the one weird clip on the movie trailer showing Sarah w/scars on her back getting "healed" by Rochelle–this scene never appeared in the movie itself, and fans call it the "mystery" scene. You can find it on the DVD if you pause it just right. I was going to post it within the body of the story but it has a shirtless Sarah in it. For all the Craft "purists" reading this, you can skip this if you want and head over to Chapter 8 without missing anything.)

xxx xxx xxx

When the girls finally "let go" of Manon the sun was going down. They had completely lost track of time.

"God," Bonnie said, rubbing her left leg that had fell asleep, "how long have we been here?"

"I don't know," Rochelle replied, shaking her head full of corkscrew curls and throwing the chalice, a clay pentacle, and a few books into a bag. "But my mom is going to KILL me–K-I-L-L."

Nancy felt no rush to leave–not just because, unlike Rochelle's rich parents, "Grace" could hardly care what time the girl arrived home. "Home"–there was nothing to come home to. That shack with the skinny dog tied to a pole and the leaky roof wasn't her home. No. The grass upon which she sat–the big tree that only minutes ago (it seemed, though in reality it was more like hours ago) released its bounty of butterflies to bless the quartet–all of it–this was her true home. Under Manon's wide berth–wherever nature spread its wings–that was her home, her seat of power. Why didn't the other girls see that? Did their eyes shift as Nancy's had? Could they see the thin shimmer of the Power hanging upon the leaves and branches like gossamer?

"C'mon guys," the short dark-haired girl said, her ice-blue eyes rolling, "let's stay a little longer, what's the problem? Didn't you see what happened? How can you worry about anything–we've got _Manon_ on our side!"

The others looked back at her vaguely, half-absorbed in the packing up of their belongings and the brushing-off of dirt and grass from their clothes. The miracle of the butterflies was quickly receding into their memory in the face of the pressures and reassertion of reality. Rochelle's over achieving parents waiting impatiently for her by the door, tapping their watches and worrying about her SATs. Sarah's dread of running into Chris or one of his asshole friends in the halls again, so uncomfortable, so humiliating. And Bonnie–Bonnie sheepishly pulling her jacket back over her scarred shoulder, scars the very essence of Reality with a capital "R". Scars like monuments that last forever, regardless of the butterflies or gods that deign to visit.

"It could have been a coincidence, Nance," Rochelle answered in a voice that was meant to be sympathetic but grated on Nancy's ears like nails across a chalkboard. "It's late Spring. Butterflies...do their thing this time of the year."

"Maybe they were attracted by the wine," Bonnie offered, as she zipped her jacket up to her chin. "It's sweet."

Nancy felt like she was drowning, like her grip on her miracle was slipping away with each "perfectly rational reason" each girl volleyed in her direction. In desperation she turned to Sarah. The brunette with the long mousy hair merely shrugged, her face expressionless.

But _Sarah_ knew–Sarah knew, too. She felt it as strong as Nancy. She knew. She knew and she was too damn scared and excited and overjoyed and fearful to say one word about it.

xxx xxx xxx

The girl speared a piece of squishy broccoli with her fork and thought: "what if everything I ever wanted came true?"

"Is it too cold?"

Sarah, startled from her reverie, looked up at Jenny blankly. "Huh?" Then she remembered--by the time she arrived home, what was left of dinner wa in the process of being partitioned out in little fake Tupperware bowls. Duh.

The older woman began again good-naturedly, gesturing at Sarah's dish. "I could just warm it up for you in the microwave, it won't take any time..."

_Good ol' Jen_, the girl thought. Unlike the stereotypical step-mother, dad's new wife really tried to have a good relationship with her. And they did. Have a good relationship. Though nobody could take the place of her mother...

"Uh? Oh, no, Jen, it's okay, it's fine...it tastes great! It's my fault, anyway for getting home so late..."

"...and not calling!" her dad called out from the living room, shaking his newspaper dramatically for emphasis. Dad–trying to be stern, failing miserably, too much of a big teddy-bear. Points for effort, though.

"_Sorry_..."

Mr. Bailey immediately folded in the face of his daughter's apology. "No, that's...that's okay, honey, I'm glad you've made some friends so soon in the school." He folded the paper on his lap and thought for a second, then smiled. "Hey, you should invite them for dinner some time!"

Sarah pictured Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle holding a ritual for Manon on the very dining-room table she ate her clammy chicken teriyaki. As much as she liked the girls, there was something about the idea of them–especially Nancy-- crossing the threshold of her doorway into the house that bothered her for some reason...for no reason, actually. She didn't know why she thought that. It was probably because she was an aloof, crazy, mixed-up person, she thought with a frown.

The pale brunette cleaned her plate and went to bed.

xxx xxx xxx

_Rochelle?_

"Yes, Sarah?"

_What are you doing here?_

"We're having the field trip, remember? That's why we're sitting in the grass..._duh_."

_Duh. Well. Anyway._

"Anyway."

_'Chelle, what happened to my shirt?_

"I'm healing your back."

_Why are you healing my back?_

"Because you've got these scars, silly."

_I...Rochelle, that's Bonnie. I don't have any scars._

"Yes you do."

_No, I don–ok, actually, I guess I do. But they're on my wrist._

"They're really big scars, Sarah. Nancy can't believe how big they are. Maybe Manon can fix things. Make it all better."

_But Rochelle, nothing can make it all better..._

"Remember the butterflies? You believed then, didn't you? You just didn't say anything. You believed because you have the Power. Don't you?"

_Aw, come on, 'Chelle, I don't have any power...I was just exaggerating that time, about making myself go deaf for three days. And that homeless man...well, he was crazy..._

"No, Nancy said you have great power. Great, great power."

_She said that, really? I always thought she didn't really like me._

"Nancy says you have great power."

_Oh...okay. Wow. Anyway...that stupid spell I did, though...about Chris...that's bogus, it's not going to work..._

"Are you kidding? Chris is crazy about you. Absolutely crazy."

_Uh, really? Wow...how do you know?_

"Nancy told me, of course. It's all over the school. Chris is in love with you. He can't stop thinking about you."

_Really?_

"_Really_."

xxx xxx xxx

And in the dream Sarah asked Rochelle a hundred times, a thousand times, if it was true, if Chris really liked her. And it was all swirling in her mind...Rochelle sitting behind her, healing her bare back...Chris...the butterflies...the bloody straight-razor clinking in the white porcelain sink..and suddenly she felt a sharp thing stick into her back, at the base of her spine. And she knew without looking back that it was no longer Rochelle behind her, knew it was now Nancy, could feel that short Gothic girl's patchouli-scented breath whispering in her ear–

"Agh!" Sarah gasped as she bolted upright in her bed, curling her arms inward protectively towards her gut & shaking.

But whatever message the dream had meant to impart got lost in the sheer, crushing disappointment of being back, of being Here, in the real World...in a world where a player like Chris definitely wasn't hers, never would be. And she felt such a tide of remorse, of sorrow as she entered the waking world where she could never be together with him...and her crying, it was more than that bastard ever deserved.


	8. The Craft Pt 8: It's Working!

**The Craft: Book of the Movie**

**Chapter 8: It's Working!**

xxx xxx xxx

It struck Chris Hooker like a bat to the back of the head–sudden and near-fatal. The poor boy was in love.

_Bang-bang-bang!_

The French teacher stopped his rapping onhis coffee mug and admonished Chris with a pedantic, heavily-accented voice:

"Regardez la page, Monsieur Hook-aire!"

Why didn't the star football player realize it before–how unearthly beautiful Sarah Bailey was! And he was bone-headed enough to trade barbs with the girl, to make her...hate him? Surely he hadn't been so stupid as to do that. Did he do that? It was hard to remember. It was hard to remember a life Before.

Sarah had been purposely ignoring him the whole class..afraid to look in his direction, afraid he would see her looking at him and feel superior, give her that same old poop-eating evil grin like always did those horrid days after he had lied about her to the school. Maybe he would notice the way she fixed her long light-brown locks extra-neat that morning, with a child's barrette tucked demurely in her hair; maybe he would notice the mascara. He would notice...and he would feel Big, superior, so very worthy to have prompted this poor wretch to actually try to fix herself up.

But out of the corner of her eye she caught him looking. Did she really catch him looking?

Sarah buried her nose in her _Deuxieme Livre_.

"Do you think it's working?" Bonnie nervously whispered, fidgeting with her pen.

"I don't know...I-I think he just looked at me, did he look at me? Is he looking?"

"Not right now...but he just did!"

_"It's so weird!"_ Sarah answered in a barely audible voice, breathing out the words.

"I know...now I know he's looking!"

"He's looking?"

"Yes!"

Sarah's heart tightened in excitement.

"Shhh..." she warned her friend in a voice a little too loud itself, worrying that their heated little discussion might attract the attention of the teacher. Hell, she had Chris's attention all right.

Or was it all a coincidence, like the butterflies?

xxx xxx xxx

The willowy brunette could barely contain her ecstasy–it was written all over her broadly grinning face, the way her eyes narrowed in mischief as she asked Bonnie,

"Is he still back there?" She motioned with her head towards the fool who was staring desperately at her about ten feet away. The two girls were clutching their school books in their hands and headed, for all places, Mass.

"Ye-ep!" the other girl smiled from behind her slightly-greasy strands of hair, pulling her books against her chest tighter. Bonnie held no jealousy towards Sarah regarding Chris–she was happy for her, in fact. But much more than that–she was simply jazzed that any of the magick was working at all...after so many months of "drill sergeant" Nancy lecturing to them about the "right" way to invoke, putting the girls through the paces over and over again with exhausting rituals that seemed to yield nothing! Finally! Maybe Manon was listening to them, now...

Chris was now only inches away.

"Sarah!"

It was good to be Queen.

"Yeah?" she replied as if she didn't give a shit, as if he was a worm. So quickly the tables turn!

Face-to-face with the Goddess, the jock lost his nerve, his mind blank (or rather, blanker than it had been ever since he got "hit" with that bat.). He put his finger up to his mouth stupidly.

"N-never mind," he stuttered, making an awkward 180 and resuming his position behind the Queen and her Lady-in Waiting.

Bonnie was floored. In all the years she had known Mr. Hooker (which included, unfortunately, elementary school), he was never at a loss for words...or ever appeared to be such a complete dork. This, in her mind, cinched it:

"It's working!" Bonnie laughed.

"Either that or he's gone completely _crazy_," the other girl answered glibly. At that moment she could feel him come up again, almost comprehend the warmth of his body–

"Y-you hate me, right?" Chris asked in all wide-eyed sincerity.

For a split-second Sarah processed all the interactions she had with the boy since she first arrived at St. Benedict's. French class. Telling her about the "Bitches of Eastwick". Football practice. Their first and only date. And then–

"No," she replied nonchalantly.

"You don't?"

"No."

"Because you see, when you're a guy–and I am–people expect things. I mean...I know I said some nasty things about you..."

Bonnie silently walked up ahead of them; so sensitive to any sort of conflict and always out to avoid it.

Sarah let out a luxurious sigh at Chris' words.

"Did you tell your friends?"

"What?"

The two descended the staircase that led to the basement-level church, a string of flowers and ivy hanging from a fence right above Sarah's head like a crown.

"That you're a lying sack of shit."

The boy scratched his ear foolishly.

"Uh, no..." His expression brightened. "B-but I will! Um...I'll tell them tomorrow, I'll tell the truth..."

Sarah had to bite her lip not to explode in complete happiness. She fought to hold her head high and curb her grin.

"Good," she said elegantly, as the bell tolled.

"Uh–can I sit with you in mass?" he asked hopefully.

_This is too much_, the girl thought, catching up with Bonnie and nearly laughing in her neck.

"Sure."

xxx xxx xxx

Sarah and Bonnie badly stifled laughs all the way into the rectory, the light of the novena candles casting shadows upon their ebullient expressions.

"Watch this," the lighter-haired girl said to her companion. She handed her books to Chris, who was as tame and apparently smart as a trained puppy. "Could you carry this for me? They're really heavy..."

"Yeah," Chris robotically replied.

"And Bonnie's too–she has a bad back."

Bonnie plopped her books on top of Sarah's and posed in scoliotic agony.

Sarah then impulsively took the bag off her shoulder and hung it around the boy's neck like a horsefeeder. Then the two young women skipped ahead of him and gleefully chuckled behind their hands. It wasn't just the thrill of laying low such an insufferable tyrant as Chris had been. It was something more...it was...the first stirrings...of Power.

MeanwhileMitt and the rest of the Hooker entourage had been witnessing the emasculation of their friend in abject horror.

"Hey Chris,"Mitt called out across the pews, "can you hold my jock for me? It's kinda heavy."

Now, Mitt was no sentimental flower, but the way his buddy looked back at him with these two expressionless doll eyes cut him to the quick. More than that, it creeped the shit out of him.

"What are you, Stepford Boy?"Mitt did an impromptu Boris Karloff/shambling zombie routine but it failed to stir the least bit of emotion or even recognition in his friend.

"Sit," Sarah ordered playfully. And the boy sat. She rewarded him with a concerned touch on his wrist. "Pay attention," she said as if she was one of the teaching nuns–but her thoughts were far from Holy. Fleeting images of the two making out crossed her mind, and what interesting applications such a hold over the lad might yield–

And as the girl giggled like a 12-year old and basked in the glow of the complete subservience of the boy she always wanted (or rather, always wanted as of this year), she remained blissfully ignorant of the fact that Mitt's was not the only pair of deeply concerned eyes watching the spectacle that was unfolding amidst the statues and flowers and incense.

"Her spell is working," Rochelle excitedly whispered in Nancy's ear. "Check it out, her spell is working!"

Nancy's jaw set tightly as she pretended to be too engrossed in her book of Kabbalah to notice.

xxx xxx xxx

Another meeting of the St. Benedict's Witch Club and Knitting Circle was in order, and it was Bonnie's turn to host. A bookcase full of beautiful porcelain dolls and well-loved Cabbage Patch Kids stared down blankly at the crew as they lounged on pillows before the TV and horsed around. Actually, only Sarah, Rochelle, and Bonnie seemed to be grooving with it–Nancy detached herself subtly from the others, still apparently plugging away at that pesky Kabbalah. The glow from the screen flared eerily off of the petite goth's black PVC pants as Bonnie tried to toss popcorn in Sarah's mouth.

"It's hard, you know," Bonnie explained after missing.

'Chelle took a drag from her cigarette. "You're like, you're like two feet away from each other!" She then groaned as Nancy reached across her body to snag the ashtray. "Uggh!"

"I'm not that heavy," Nancy answered with a grin, suddenly getting pulled back into the energy of the group.

"Yeah–you're light as a feather," _drag-puff-puff_, "during deep space travel!"

"I am, actually..."

"Did you guys ever play that game?" Sarah suddenly asked. "Light as a feather, stiff as a board?"

And after the gang answered in the negative:

"One girl lays down, and you surround her, and you put your fingers underneath..." the light-haired brunette wiggled her index and middle finger together. This brought a wicked thought from Nancy, who mimicked the hand expression.

"You put your finger _where_?" she asked with a wicked grin.

xxx xxx xxx

_How do I get into these things_, Rochelle wondered, as she closed her eyes and folded her arms before her. _It's because I'm black, isn't it? Sigh!_

Rochelle was going to be the focal point of Sarah's childhood game "Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board". She lay on the wood floor as the girls knelt beside her–Sarah and Bonnie on one side, Nancy on the other–with their index and middle fingers underneath her body. Nancy had been the one to suggest the candlelight–freakin' Nancy, it always had to be a ritual for her!

"Now you have to imagine that she's incredibly light," Sarah explained, "like she was made out of air.."

It was time for Bonnie to get cheeky. She had actually washed her hair for this little getogether and put it partially up–and didn't look half bad. Must have been Sarah's spell-workin' mojo rubbing off of her. Or maybe just the simple fact that now she had a reason to _hope_.

"Now, is that her whole body or just her head?"

"Cow!" 'Chelle shot back.

"Guys, c'mon, concentrate–or it's not going to work."

Properly chastened, the other three girls drew breaths of concentration and tried to appear serious. But Nancy just couldn't help it...

"I think I just sprained my finger," she said with her patented Downs 2000-watt smile.

"Guys, focus!" Sarah admonished above the peals of laughter. "C'mon you guys, c'mon, ready? Light as a feather, stiff as a board..." She and Bonnie and Nancy shut their eyes and began in unison:

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

And their hands started to slowly rise, along with Rochelle's prone body. But they hardly paused a second to acknowledge the feat, they just kept going:

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

_Light as a feather, stiff as a board._

And slowly, unconsciously, Sarah felt her fingers slip away from under her friend. And she opened her eyes. And Rochelle was still there, eye-level to the astonished girl.

"Holy shit," she said in a tiny voice.

Bonnie, who, along with Nancy, had also let go of Rochelle, couldn't even speak, her teeth just clacked. Nancy's big ice-blue eyes swelled in her head as she placed her hands over her mouth and let out a low guttural gasp.

The girl was floating in mid-air!

But Rochelle, who by this time was one yawn away from falling asleep, was clueless.

"You guys, it's not working." Then she made the mistake of opening her eyes and glancing to her left. "Whooooa!" Her eyes flitted from side to side; she was too afraid to move any other part of her body.

"Shut-up, or you're going to fall!" Sarah said automatically, instinctually understanding the arcane dynamics of this bizarre event.

"W-who's got the instructions!"

"Shhh–keep concentrating..."

"Amazing!" Bonnie exclaimed.

As if on cue, her mom entered the room after a perfunctory knock.

"Hi, got clean towels for everyone..."

Rochelle dropped to the floor before the mother could see anything, though the heavy thump followed by laughter and "oh my poor butt!" still alarmed the older woman.

"What's going on in here? Are you getting high?"

Bonnie ran to grab the towels and whisk Mommy away.

Getting high? Oh, she had _no idea_...


	9. The Craft Pt9: It's All About The Power

The Craft: Book of the Movie

Chapter 9: It's All About The Power

Note: The last scene of this chapter is an actual deleted scene from the film. You can find it on the special edition DVD under "special features"

xxx xxx xxx

_Can I touch you, are you out of touch  
I guess I never noticed that much  
Geranium lover, I'm live on your wire  
Come and take me whoever you are_

Nancy wasn't satisfied. Oh sure, that neat trick with Rochelle was good for a while, satiated her hunger to see the magick...but at the end of the day it was just a trick. A _trick_.

Of course, there was the whole business with Chris to consider. But what good did it do _her_? All it did was make her feel like shit. The petite goth didn't totally believe it was the magick, either. Chris obviously liked Sarah more than her. Who wouldn't choose Sarah over her? Truth was, Nancy hated herself. Hated where she came from, hated how she looked like...even hated her brilliant blue eyes. Thought they "popped" out of her head, were too big. Yeah, Nance put up a good, tough front–you had to, in order to survive. Because somebody was always looking to take what was yours, to pull one over on you, to take advantage of you. And she learned those lessons at the altar of Mom's host of clients/boyfriends, Stan only being the latest of them.

Well, once she had the power of Manon, that would all change. Nobody would dare touch her ever again. Unless she wanted them to.

But she wasn't going to get anywhere being part of the "ooh look, a floating body!" cheering committee. The girls were getting too complacent. They hadn't performed an official spell since the field trip.

It was time to give them a gentle push.

_She's a lot like you  
The dangerous type  
She's a lot like you  
Come on and hold me tight_

xxx xxx xxx

Nancy stretched her arm carefully over the steaming slices of pizza and condiment containers that littered the outdoor lunch table and handed the thin volume to Sarah.

"This is what I've been talking to you about," she said with a crisp smile and the voice of a perky saleslady, "an invocation. It's the next step."

Bonnie and Rochelle craned their necks over Sarah's shoulders to look at the pages. On the left side was an odd, medieval-looking illustration of four girls dancing around a tree. Nancy continued.

"It's no ordinary spell, however. This one has to be good. It's for keeps. If we do it half-assed we're in danger of pissing off Manon."

"But this spell calls for animal sacrifice," Sarah said in a matter-of-fact voice, frowning.

The little raven-haired girl with the slicked-back 'do and the black PVC jacket sneered and sucked her teeth.

"It does _not_ say anything about animal sacrifice, Sarah...read the chapter. We just need to bring them to the ritual. Like...witnesses. Witnesses to Manon."

"Well..." As Indiana Jones might have said: _why did it have to be snak_es? The whole issue of snakes gave Sarah the heebie-jeebies...snakes, insects, and rats just about horrified her more than anything else in the world. Note to self, she thought–put Nancy on snake detail. "..._okay_. Alright. I guess besides that this ritual doesn't look too hard to set up. Between the four of us we have enough candles to light up the LAX runway during a blackout."

"Cool," chimed in Rochelle, taking a swig from her soft-drink can. "It's settled then."

"_Not_ exactly," Nancy said, lacing her fingers together and keeping them folded on her tray. "In order for this spell to work, we're going to need a higher grade of magick book. Llewellyn Press just isn't going to cut it. Lirio has a couple that might be exactly what we need." She paused to clear her throat. "But they are not going to be cheap."

Sarah imagined asking her father for an advance on her allowance for the next year so she could buy a book of witchcraft. Uh..._no_.

"Are...you sure a certain book is really going to make a difference, Nance? Maybe we could find something in the librar..."

That was all the petite Goth could take.

_Inside angel, always upset..._

"Who introduced this to you, Sarah!" Bonnie's eyes fell on the book in an attempt to disassociate herself from the tension and Rochelle sighed lightly. "How many years have _you_ been studying the Craft? Please tell me...because I've only been reading this stuff for, gosh, I don't know–my whole freakin' _life_!"

Maybe that wasn't exactly true. But even as a little girl Nancy had been fascinated with stories about magic and spellweavers–first the fairy tales, then "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" (though she hated the ending), then Tolkien. She remembered this goofy little TV special she saw when she was like 10–"The Worst Witch." Always witches with her, always making little "spells," leaving little bundles of herbs and whatnot in places to freak her mother out or scare her johns. She liked being spooky, giving the impression that she had some sort of Power. And studying the books on Wicca, that was a natural progression for her.

But the book she wanted to purchase for the invocation–that had nothing to do with Wicca.

And now Sarah was standing in the way. Nancy bet she was doing it on purpose, wanted all the power for herself. Bitch.

_Keep on forgetting that we ever met..._

Meanwhile, Sarah–oblivious to the vaguely dangerous train of thought that was churning through Nancy's brain–merely felt like a wet blanket, a coward. Not a "team" player. That's probably why she had so few friends in her old school. She was a big drip.

"I'm...sorry, Nancy. You're right. Big spells need...big books." Buoyed by Nancy's sudden placated feline grin, the girl with the long brown hair nodded in resolve. "I say we all chip in for it. How much could it cost?"

_That's a girl_, thought Nancy.

_Can I bring you out in the light  
My curiosity's got me tonight  
She's a lot like you  
The dangerous type  
She's a lot like you_

xxx xxx xxx

In the days that had followed, the girls went through the oddest transformation–odd partially because they hadn't even done the darn spell yet. What was that change...that made them walk with their heads held high and seemed to make them radiate beauty & personal power? Was it all in their heads? Had the trick with Rochelle and all this planning for the invocation fooled their minds in thinking they were more popular and successful than they were? What convinced Bonnie to properly take care of her hair and to actually show some skin (even if it only was her unscarred legs)? What took the cares away from them that had plagued their lives so oppressively only weeks before and allowed them to laugh carefree together as sisters during a sleepover?

That girl blissfully chowing down on the Ben and Jerry's–what made her forget that she carried the ravages of third-degree burns from a childhood injury on her back?

That girl with the corkscrew curls telling a saucy joke and rubbing her sock-clad feet together in content–what made her forget all the racist bullshit she had to put up with at St. Benedict's?

That girl leaning against the headboard and giggling and looking at an image of Elizabeth Montgomery from "Bewitched" and actually identifying herself with the beautiful and self-confident character–what made her forget that she tore her veins open only a year ago in a bloody attempt to end her life?

And that girl on the bed, slightly apart from the others, lost in reoccurring reveries concerning magick and power–what made her forget being molested by Stan?

An animated Samantha Stevens wiggled her nose.

xxx xxx xxx

"This–school–is–_ours_!" Nancy crowed triumphantly as the four roamed the open-air cafeteria of St. Benedict's.

_The museum directors with their high shaking heads  
They kick white shadows until they play dead  
They want to crack your crossword smile_

Nobody dared make fun of them anymore–at least not to their face. Jocks and preps and cheerleaders alike all scrambled, it seemed, to get out of their way. And surely it was not because they were so scary, so _monstrou_s–if anything, the girls never looked so hot in their entire lives. They all dressed rather alike now–Sarah, Bonnie & Rochelle taking a fashion cue from Nancy. Rosary beads and gothic necklaces draped their necks–Nance going one further and actually having the guts to wear her pentagram. And gone were the layered, drab clothing that hid so much...even though the boys feared them, they couldn't get their eyes off of the girls, either. Neither could a few of the priests. Nancy blew a kiss at one of them.

Sarah thought–_this is the best time of my entire life_. _This moment, right now. And I didn't even need Chris for it. I guess I'm over him, after all. It was so silly for me to have gotten so worked up over him._

That moment when the four did their victory march through the school–Sarah freeze-framed it in her mind and would often look back at it. So happy. So innocent. So clueless.

xxx xxx xxx

Target: Laura Lizzie

Sarah's mission: to help 'Chelle get a little payback.

Little Miss Bleach Blond in her Keds strutting down the hallway, so oblivious to what was going to happen as soon as–Sarah got–close enough–

_Snatch!_

The brunette's fingers deftly dug into Laura's mane & snapped like scissors, twisting around a thin lock and pulling it out.

"_Ow_!" the girl exclaimed, whipping her head back to face her assailant in shock & disbelief. "You pulled my hair out!"

"Sorry," Sarah replied with a deadpan look. "I thought I saw a bug. They have shampoo for that, you know."

"Stupid bitch!"

Ah, yes. Laura Lizzie. Racist. Lie-spreader. All-around toxic gal. Crying over a little strand of lost hair...just a little tiny strand of hair...

xxx xxx xxx

"What do you think will happen to Laura," Rochelle asked with a thoughtful expression bordering on grave. They were all over Sarah's house for a late-nite meeting of the Bitches of Eastwick, and at the moment the hostess was braiding the pilfered strands of Laura's hair into the African-American's honey-brown curly locks.

"I don't know," Sarah replied, "if she leaves you alone nothing will happen to her, nothing good..."

Rochelle sighed heavily and turned away. "Fat chance." Then a black-and-white photograph in a beautiful, intricately carved wooden picture frame caught her eye. It was of a willowy blond in a sundress with a faraway expression on her face. "Who's that?"

"Oh, that's my real mother," Sarah answered, having finished her weaving and now consulting her spell book.

"Where is she?"

"She died when she was having me." The pale brunette's fingers flipped through the pages but it was suddenly hard to focus.

_Yikes_, Rochelle thought. _I should never of asked, this is awkward._

"Sorry..."

"It's okay," Sarah said hoarsely, trying to bring the words in the book in focus.

"Manon..." Bonnie's voice cut through the room with the raw, heart-felt plea. "...take my scars..."

She was by the fireplace with Nancy, her shirt off and the rough, discolored skin of her back stark against the light of the blaze. The other girl hovered her palms over the ruined flesh in a healing motion, trying to project energy into the dermis.

"...give me beauty outside, as well as in..."

She wanted to be "cured" so bad! It was painful to watch her rock back and forth and squeeze her eyes in desperate concentration, painful to watch because honestly the other three girls deep down didn't think Manon could do it. Making some guy fall in love & some girl levitate–there was something abstract about it, invisible, like air. But to make something so heartbreakingly physical and real as those scars melt away...they just couldn't imagine it.

Correction–Sarah _could _imagine it. But intuitively she knew that Nancy was doing it the wrong way, that it wouldn't work with her. She couldn't explain how she knew–she hardly could explain it even to herself. But she knew, just as she knew that the butterflies were Manon's physical manifestation. Nancy just didn't have...the positive energy necessary to bring about the healing. She didn't have the requisite _power_...

...and Sarah did. And if she didn't act, Bonnie would continue to suffer, continue to live a life covered up from the world.

When Nancy stepped away to go to the bathroom & Rochelle was preoccupied with examining her blond "hair extension" in the mirror, Sarah discretely made the offer to Bonnie. The meek girl with the sweet smile and the oversized sweater quickly responded in the affirmative, as if she knew what the girl was going to say before she said it.

xxx xxx xxx

They agreed to perform the healing ritual in Bonnie's hospital room the night before another of those pointless "experimental procedures". It was a very casual facility and Sarah had no problem getting in to see her friend, bag full of goodies in tow.

When the girl arrived Bonnie was in her hospital blues, sitting on the bed cross-legged and pensive, her body framed by the rain-spattered window.

"Hey, sweetie!" Sarah called out, shaking the white tote bag. "Don't look so glum; it's time to celebrate!"

Soon both girls were facing each other on the bed, the lighter-haired girl starting to pull things out of the tote.

"I just want you to know that everything that I have in this bag I personally stole from my parents."

The stressed young woman in the blue gown began to relax and started to laugh. Sarah took out a bundle of green leaves & continued.

"First we have sage–for healing." She then took out a bottle. "And we have sweet wine, for contentment–and to get totally shitfaced!"

Bonnie laughed again, her arms wrapped around her bent legs. "Excellent!"

Next was a magazine. "Elle," Sarah said cheekily, "for fashion." Then a green container of cookies: "Snackwells, for noshing." And lastly, a pink rose. Bonnie blushed. "A rose–for beauty."

The girls sat in silence for a second, the room soundless but for the steady streaming of water against the glass. Bonnie looked like she was a million miles away I thought.

"What?" Sarah asked in concern. "Bonnie, what's wrong?"

Bonnie lowered her eyes and smiled wistfully, trying to find the exact words.

"Did you know that...every morning I wake up and for a few seconds, I think I'm normal? And then I _remember_..."

"Maybe this time the doctors will do..."

Bonnie shook her head.

"No, the doctors have no idea of what they're doing." The girl suddenly looked deep in her friend's eyes with conviction. "Sarah, you can make this work..."

Sarah looked away. "No...I can't..."

"_Yes you can_! The first time I saw you, I knew it–you can _fix_ me..."

Hearing Bonnie talk scared the hell out of Sarah...made her heart race.

"I-I don't want to screw anything up..."

"Sarah–_please_!"

"D-don't put this on me..."

Bonnie's voice choked with emotion: "I know you can...please...please..."

"I-I...I'll try."

_Oh, God_, Sarah thought. _Oh God...please don't let me mess this up, mess Bonnie up. Please don't let me hurt her...like I hurt my mother..._

xxx xxx xxx

The lighted bundle of sage illuminated the dark hospital room. Sarah made an improvised sign of the cross/pagan hand gesture, blew a kiss at the leaves, and waved the smoking object over Bonnie's back as she lay on her stomach. The prone girl had her eyes clamped shut in anticipation and fear.

_Oh, God, please give me the power..._

After a few passes with the sage Sarah dunked the bundle in a glass of water; she knew intuitively that the sage had "absorbed" much of the negativity in the skin. Then it was time to touch the special preparation of healing oils she made–equal parts jasmine, patchoulli, ylang-ylang & myrrh–and anoint her friend's back, kissing the sacred ointment before she did so. Bonnie flinched slightly at the touch, but out of the sudden sensation, not any discomfort.

"Goddess of healing, let it begin...healing without, healing within..."

The girl on the bed started to moan softly as if in pain...the spot where Sarah was touching her...it was starting to feel like it was...burning...

Sarah frowned in disbelief at Bonnie's reaction, and at the heat and "buzzing" that was plaguing her own hand. Yet she continued...to stop a spell in mid-performance would be a far worse thing to do.

"Healing your spirit...healing your skin...goddess of healing...let it begin."

The other girl started fidgeting, rubbing her forehead against the mattress in a sweat.

"Ow...it's..it's hot!"

But Sarah would not–could not–stop the spell, only look on in horror, only continue to be this powerful conduit of Manon's...and the feeling...like being plugged into a light-socket...buzzing..powerful...

"Sarah, it _hurts_!"

Buzzing, powerful, burning...so much energy...can't stop...

"Sarah..._aieeeee_!"

Suddenly the window's shutters burst free of their puny lock, sending the teddy bears and get-well cards flying to the floor as a strong, hot gush of wind and rain shot through the room.

Sarah could feel the body of Manon standing directly behind her.

_She's a lot like you  
The dangerous type  
She's a lot like you  
Come on and hold me tight _


	10. The Craft Pt 10: Just Desserts

**The Craft: The Book of the Movie**

**Chapter 10: Just Desserts**

Rochelle always got a "wormy" feeling in her stomach when passing by Laura Lizzie and her cronies at swimming practice; she absolutely hated the bleach-blond for turning what was otherwise a depply pleasurable & relaxing experience into one to be dreaded. But this morning 'Chelle felt a peculiar sense of confidence, one that she fully didn't recognize until she walked out onto the diving board, Laura's eyes on her person & the crisp sensation of cool damp wood under her feet.

"Don't hit your head on the diving board!" Lizzie bellowed out to her favorite target. With her yellow locks covered by a wrinkled rubber cap and a limp towel over her body, she didn't look so intimidating anymore. Pale wet skin covered in gooseflesh...mean eyes. _Hmm_, something told Rochelle: _hmm, that girl doesn't know what she's talking about, she has no idea. Hmm, that girl...that girl, you don't have to _worry_ about that girl anymore._

'Chelle didn't question the voice in her head; it sounded enough like her not to be alarming. She merely returned her rival's spiteful gaze with one of steely confidence.

Laura's attention left the corkscrew-haired girl and focused instead on post-swim grooming. Hurried, thoughtless fingers pulled the black swim-cap off her head; and with the cap, a thick, wavy rope of her own hair.

"O-oh my..._God_!" Now her hands flailed in a panic through her mane, strands of hair falling out left and right. "_Oh my God_!" If she could have seen the back of her head--a courtesy that a hairdresser might perform via the strategic placing of mirrors at the more fashionable salons--the girl might have become even more frantic than she was. Her scalp was scaly, blistered, and an angry red hue.

"What's going on!" a Laura-ite inquired in horror as she witnessed the shedding.

"I-I don't know! What does it look like? Oh...gross!"

And far above the concerns of mortal women stood 'Chelle--tall, proud, vindicated, and not the least bit confused or clueless over the commotion under her. She merely flashed a tight, sharp smile, threw her arms up, and made a flawless double-flip and clean dive into the serene chlorinated blue below.

xxx xxx xxx

With all the monitors, overhead lamps, and sharp electric pokey-things the examining room appeared to be something out of Frankenstein...but to Bonnie, it was just "another pass."

The youngish looking doctor with the severe page-boy finished undoing the back of the girl's polka-dotted robe and turned to Mom as if the patient wasn't there at all.

"Now I want you to remember that we might have to make several passes before we can see any results."

Bonnie ducked her head in frustration, avoiding the faces of all in the room. _It's like I don't even exist_, she muttered in her thoughts; _nobody really sees me in school, and nobody sees me here_. She had done such a good job covering herself up and becoming "part of the background"--which was much more preferable to being the center of ridicule--that nearly made herself pop out of existence in the world.

Another voice spoke inside the confines of her skull: _but what you really want is to be noticed, don't you? You want to be the center of attention...you know, just like Laura Lizzie. You always say that Laura is a slag, but secretly you want to be just like her. Don't you?_

The voice sounded too much like her own thoughts to give her any pause.

"Is it any better?" the girltimidly asked, two huge monitors displaying the ruined, pink skin that the doctor began to reveal with the careful pulling-off of bandages.

"I can't tell yet, dear," her mother answered with a sigh, the concern on her face giving the fearfulyoung womanher answer.

Bonnie held her breath, looked to the left--stared at some nondescript piece of medical equipment--and seethed silently as the icy rounded part of the doctor's scissors traced an invisible line down her back. Images from the healing with Sarah flashed in her mind, memories of how sure she was, up until about two mintues ago, that it really was going to come true. But that was crazy to even hope for. Insane.

Insane to think that things could work out, for _once_...

A tiny bud of a tear started to well up in her right eye as the nurse's camera kept whirring and snapping.

"What does it look like," the freckle-faced girl asked Mother warily.

"I-I don't know yet...I don't know..."

But unless the monitors were faulty, it seemed as if the latest Procedure--much like the 12 or so others--hadn't "took." _Poor Bonnie-Baby_, Mother thought..._and she was so happy lately, with her friends_ (even though the three girls were a little "weird"). Mother was afraid that this latest failure would send Bonnie spiraling into another depression, causing the girl to lock herself up Rapunzel-like in her tower...

And then the unexplainable happened.

The rough, misshapen skin that had been a part of the young woman's life since she was a little girl and almost died began to...give way. It wiped away clean under the untreated gauze the doctor was gingerly dragging across her patient's back. Wiped away like some mess that merely needed to be cleaned up.

"I can't believe it," the doctor said in a trance. The nurse suddenly became too distracted to continue photographing, and the metallic noise from the camera ceased.

And below Bonnie's injured dermis, the purest, sweetest skin imaginable shone radiantly, like that of a newborn child.

"W-what?" the patient asked in initial terror, primed to expect the worst.

"It _worked_. The treatment worked!"

The girl's neck almost incurred whiplash as she turned around to see for herself.

In less than 30 seconds Yesterday's Bonnie died, the path of her life altered forever; and such a change, though not a part of the actual, physical spell, was a bit of magic in itself.

xxx xxx xxx

"Yo dude, seriously--if you don't stop, you'll go blind."

"Hairy palms!"

Mitt and Trey were obviously making the most of Art Appreciation class, and sharing none of the concern of the three Bitches of Eastwick who noted the usually punctual Bonnie's absence with anxiety. Their friend's latest hospital stay had come to an end the day before--and with it, the results of her latest skin-graft. But only _they _knew it was more than about the graft. If Manon was going to help her, it had to be yesterday, it was the crucial Window of Opportunity. And of course everybody was jazzed about Laura's heartbreak of scalp-scabbies, but they still were quietly of the opinion that erasing the horror of third degree burn scars was just too much for the Big Guy In The Sky to handle. And fragile Bonnie...how could she take it...

Sarah craned her neck and whispered urgently to Rochelle.

"She was supposed to come back today, d-did you talk to her?

Rochelle fidgeted with her necklace nervously and shook her head. Nancy was about to chime in when _She_ burst into the classroom.

"_Whoa_..." Sarah intoned as all three girls--and the rest of the class, excluding the humorless grey-haired nun--felt their jaws drop open and hit the desk.

"Homeroom starts at 8:45 sharp!" the nun chided the statuesque, gorgeous girl who strutted into class and whipped off her jacket to reveal a low-cut top and an ample bosom.

"Sorry," Bonnie said cheekily as she took her seat amongst her Sisters, "my pedicure ran late!"

"Bon-nee!" Rochelle said in congratulations. "Holy Shit!" screamed Nancy. And those two weren't the only one taking notice...

"Hi, Bonnie," Mitt said sheepishly, turning around in his desk to gawk at the stunner and waving at her.

"Hey Bonnie, howsitgoin'?" added Trey.

And though she had been the butt of the cruel heartless jokes of these boys--as well as so many others--Bonnie's first thoughts were not of the "how shallow!" variety but of sheer egotistical exhileration. She had never gone to a dance, never gone on a date. Never been kissed. But now, frankly, she wanted to boff the world, no questions asked. And she loved the attention, ate it up like it was ice-cream...or heroin.

And all three of her "bestest friends" were, apparently, so very happy for her. But Nancy couldn't stay too happy for others very long, not while she remained unloved, powerless, and Hungry. And when she caught Bonnie giving Sarah a hug and thanking her for the "healing", the short black hair on the back of her neck, just above her spiked collar, stood ramrod-straight.

_So_, the petite goth growled to herself as the quartet headed out to the campus green. _The bitch did magic behind my back, did she? Trying to undermine my work?_

And, a reaization far more painful--the only magic that worked seemed to come from Sarah. Look at what happened with Chris. And 'Chelle--it was Sarah who wove the hair, who made the chants. And now this...this deviousness with Bonnie. It was obvious. It was all very obvious to Nancy.

Sarah was more powerful than she was.

The angry girl sat on a bench visibly apart from the others, who were spread out on the grass clucking about their miracles and attracting the eyes of every horny boy who passed. She pretended she was to busy listening to gothic bands on her headset to care, but her steady, emotionless eyes smoldered.

"You look so _beautiful_," Sarah said admiringly to Bonnie, slapping one of the soles of Bonnie's high heeled shoes. "I can't believe it!"

The freckled-faced girl stopped laughing and looked back at her friend with a serious, heartfelt expression.

"It was _you_, Sarah--_you_ did it."

"N-no, I, I didn't do it..."

"No you _did_," Bonnie insisted.

"No, I, I _helped_..."

"You _totally_ did it, " piped in Rochelle. "C'mon--you made Chris love you (you totally own him)." The dark-skinned young woman smiled wickedly. "You made Laura Lizzie's hair fall out: you have to see her, she has to wear a hat every day now..."

Nancy suddenly slung her backpack over her shoulder and left in a huff, ducking her head and ignoring her friends.

"What's the matter with Nancy," Sarah asked in sincere concern.

"Oh, I don't know," 'Chelle replied, "I don't think her spell's working."

"What spell?"

It had suddenly occurred to Sarah that after all this time Nancy never did articulate what she wanted from Manon. Oh, there was that "all the power of Manon" jazz during the first ritual, but that was pretty vague and the girl figured she said it for "show."

"I don't know...something about not being white-trash anymore. And I told her: you're white, honey, just deal with it."

xxx xxx xxx

As Nancy sits before her carefully-constructed altar of collages, candles, trinkets, knives, and varous somesuch items, it might be helpful for you the reader to understand something about the magic she practiced.

It was not Wicca--dig?

It was never really Wicca, though she went through her own nascent period of the Craft where she thought she was Wiccan. The very first book she read on magic proper was Amber K.'s "True Magick", an inexpensive paperback that laid out some Wiccan fundamentals and referred her to other works. From there she quickly poured through Scott Cunningham's "Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner", Marion Weinstein's "Positive Magic," and some lovely-looking books with Celtic knots on the cover design. But the Wiccan tenets of treating others as she would like to be treated and "harm none" didn't seem to jibe with her version of reality. And to be fair to Nancy Downs, life was not always (or even often) rosy for her. Perhaps, when she was five or so, she treated others as she wanted to be treated and harmed none. And she was harmed for her trouble. Often.

Long story cut short--the "hug a tree" version of Wicca just could not cope with the simmering cauldron of hate and resentment that had been stirring inside the girl for her 16 years. But she soon found out--thanks to Lirio's library of lovingly-stealable tomes--that there were _other_ forms of magic.

Hence the old-fashioned illo of the Devil that hung amongst the dragons, goths, and mystical symbols on the wall of her altar. Oh, she never talked about Ol' Scratch with the others in her little coven--didn't want to freak 'em out. Didn't want to share Him. So she invented a substitute--some "god" that could not be found in any book or bible. Some god she "discovered". Some god only _she_ could call. She based Manon loosely on "Manannan"--Celtic god of the ocean. But she didn't really take it too seriously, it was just something to reel the others in. The Others--they would expend their magical energy focusing on this bogus "Manon", and meanwhile she had just cut a deal with Ol' Scratch to harvest that energy and serve Him. It was brilliant.

Only--now the petite gothic girl wasn't too sure that Manon wasn't real.

She hedged her bets and chanted in tongues under her breath, by that infernal altar, to both--Manon & Devil. Perhaps they really were the same. Honestly, she couldn't believe there was truly a benevolent god floating out there...not when there was so much suffering in the world. A benevolent god would not have let her been born into what she was born into.

And so Nancy chanted near-silent under her breath until her throat became raw and her mouth dry, chanted in indescipherable words for her very life.

_I need a ssssacrifice_, said the voice in her head. It wasn't the first time she was asked this, but it was the first time she actually did more than gloss over it and pretend it was just her own thoughts talking to her.

"I can't..." another thread of her mind answered. "I'll get in trouble..."

_Sssssacrifice to me! Those who worship Me indeed have nothing to fear!_

"No, I...I..."

But it was beginning to sound more and more reasonable...

_Sssssacrifice to me and I will bring you gold!_

"I..."

_Come now, pretty one...certainly there are thosssse on your foul plane who are more than desssserving of the fate?_

"S-Sarah?"

_No, you ninny, not Ssssarah! Not yet! I need _all_ of your prana!_

"I...I want to help you but...I don't know...what to do..."

_Jussst relax...relax!_

And the chanting continued long after the dialogue ceased; and when she was finished she opened her eyes, felt tremendously hungry, and thought nothing further regarding her little "chat." The "voice" sounded so much like her own that she figured she was simply talking to herself.

xxx xxx xxx

The highlight of Mrs. Downs' sad, alcohol-soaked life was making pop-tarts and drinking up cheap store-brand beer with her husband-slash-boyfriend (it was never very clear) Stan. She stood there in the cramped "kitchenette" of her trailer in ratty leggings and a gaudy sequin-studded t-shirt, her hair platinum and straw-like from too many botched Miss Clairol treatments. Her balding, greasy-haired "knight in shining armor" meanwhile sat slurping on a "tall boy", his fat stomach preventing him from getting too close to the table. His eyes perked up at the sight of Nancy emerging from her room in a silk Asian bathrobe and opening the fridge door.

"_Oooh, I can almost see through this thing_," he said in an oily voice as he lifted one corner of the robe.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Nancy screamed, hitting his hand away.

"Jesus," her mother said, not so much in alarm as annoyance at anything or anyone disturbing her perfect night with the pop-tarts. "Stan, you're supposed to act like a _father _to the girl..."

The man sneered. "I ain't her father..."

"_Thank God_!" Nancy shot back, washing her hands in the sink for no reason. Heck, maybe if she washed hard enough it would remove Stan from her, remove the whole horrible way he felt whenever that bastard did crap like this. She always wanted her mother to be the hero and get so upset that she'd throw him out: "you can't treat my daughter that way!" she would cry. But it never happened. Grace was never really like a mother to her--more like some dumb school-friend she didn't want but was stuck with.

Stan took a drag on his cigarrete and chuckled.

"Oh yeah--her dad is the guy who paid you 50 bucks for a quick bang in the back seat!"

"Hey!" Mrs Downs said, bopping her significant other lightly on the head. Nancy would have felt vindicated by the action but she knew that in her mother's mind, they were all teenagers horsing around in the playground. Pathetic.

But the man in the stale undershirt did not see it as horsing around--he leapt out of his chair and took a swing at the woman.

"You _bitch_," he yelled as he grabbed Grace tightly on the forearm, making her cower in fear, "don't you ever raise a hand at me..."

And so now the Beatings would begin. Just another night in Trailer Town--only Nancy just couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't take _any_ of it--her spells failing, her humiliation at being branded the "poor trash slut" of St. Benedict's...the mother who failed to protect her, the men who abused her, her own self-hatred..._everything_...

It had...to...STOP!

Nancy threw her hands up in the air and screamed.

"_Don't you touch her...stoppppppp_!"

A surge of electricity inundated the appliances in the pathetic little room...the light blew in a shower of sparks and the microwave door slammed open in flames.

"What the..what the hell was that!" Grace exclaimed, running to her charred pop-tarts.

But it was the formidable figure of Stan who seemed to be in the most shock at the sudden electrical anomaly...he felt a pain slowly shoot up his leg...

"You pig," Nancy hissed, focusing her blazing blue eyes at him. It was funny--she always had a hard time looking directly at the bastard, maybe out of fear or disgust or both. But now she had no such problem...because starring at him was _necessary_...

"You _pig_..." she repeated, as Stan's eyes bulged and he clutched his heart in pain.

xxx xxx xxx

The paramedics almost succeeded in bringing Stan back with the paddles...but Nancy, who was riding in the speeding ambulance alongside her grieving mother, made sure it would fail.

_You ssssee_, the voice hissed just behind the girl's eardrum, _it'sss not ssso hard..._


End file.
